Jules put the tender morsel in his mouth and ate it thoughtfully.  “I’ll try,” he promised, “if you really think that it would please him, and I can think of anything to say.  You don’t know how I dread going to the table when everything is always so still that we can hear the clock tick.”

“Well, you take my advice,” said Joyce.  “Talk about anything.  Tell him about our Thanksgiving feast and the Christmas tree, and ask him if you can’t come over every day to help.  I wouldn’t let anybody think that I was a coward.”

Joyce’s little lecture had a good effect, and monsieur saw the wisdom of Madame Greville’s advice when Jules came to the table that night.  He had brought a handful of the wonderful corn to show his uncle, and in the conversation that it brought about he unconsciously showed something else,—­something of his sensitive inner self that aroused his uncle’s interest.

Every afternoon of the week that followed found Jules hurrying over to Madame Greville’s to help with the Christmas preparations.  He strung yards of corn, and measured out the nuts and candy for each of the gay bags.  Twice he went in the carriage to Tours with Cousin Kate and Joyce, to help buy presents for the thirty little guests.  He was jostled by the holiday shoppers in crowded aisles.  He stood enraptured in front of wonderful show windows, and he had the joy of choosing fifteen things from piles of bright tin trumpets, drums, jumping-jacks, and picture-books.  Joyce chose the presents for the girls.

The tree was bought and set up in a large unused room back of the library, and as soon as each article was in readiness it was carried in and laid on a table beside it.  Jules used to steal in sometimes and look at the tapers, the beautiful colored glass balls, the gilt stars and glittering tinsel, and wonder how the stately cedar would look in all that array of loveliness.  Everything belonging to it seemed sacred, even the unused scraps of bright tarletan and the bits of broken candles.  He would not let Marie sweep them up to be burned, but gathered them carefully into a box and carried them home.  There were several things that he had rescued from her broom,—­one of those beautiful red balls, cracked on one side it is true, but gleaming like a mammoth red cherry on the other.  There were scraps of tinsel and odds and ends of ornaments that had been broken or damaged by careless handling.  These he hid away in a chest in his room, as carefully as a miser would have hoarded a bag of gold.

Clotilde Robard, the housekeeper, wondered why she found his candle burned so low several mornings.  She would have wondered still more if she had gone into his room a while before daybreak.  He had awakened early, and, sitting up in bed with the quilts wrapped around him, spread the scraps of tarletan on his knees.  He was piecing together with his awkward little fingers enough to make several tiny bags.

Henri missed his spade one morning, and hunted for it until he was out of patience.  It was nowhere to be seen.  Half an hour later, coming back to the house, he found it hanging in its usual place, where he had looked for it a dozen times at least.  Jules had taken it down to the woods to dig up a little cedar-tree, so little that it was not over a foot high when it was planted in a box.