He kept wondering, while they took him in through some big doors, and set him up in another tub, on the table, in a bare little room.  Very soon they went away, and came back again with a big basket, which they carried between them.  Then some pretty ladies, with white caps on their heads and white aprons over their blue dresses, came bringing little parcels.  The children took things out of the basket and began to play with the Little Fir Tree, just as he had often begged the wind and the snow and the birds to do.  He felt their soft little touches on his head and his twigs and his branches.  When he looked down at himself, as far as he could look, he saw that he was all hung with gold and silver chains!  There were strings of white fluffy stuff drooping around him; his twigs held little gold nuts and pink, rosy balls and silver stars; he had pretty little pink and white candles in his arms; but last, and most wonderful of all, the children hung a beautiful white, floating doll-angel over his head!  The Little Fir Tree could not breathe, for joy and wonder.  What was it that he was, now?  Why was this glory for him?

After a time every one went away and left him.  It grew dusk, and the Little Fir Tree began to hear strange sounds through the closed doors.  Sometimes he heard a child crying.  He was beginning to be lonely.  It grew more and more shadowy.

All at once, the doors opened and the two children came in.  Two of the pretty ladies were with them.  They came up to the Little Fir Tree and quickly lighted all the little pink and white candles.  Then the two pretty ladies took hold of the table with the Little Fir Tree on it and pushed it, very smoothly and quickly, out of the doors, across a hall, and in at another door.

The Little Fir Tree had a sudden sight of a long room with many little white beds in it, of children propped up on pillows in the beds, and of other children in great wheeled chairs, and others hobbling about or sitting in little chairs.  He wondered why all the little children looked so white and tired; he did not know that he was in a hospital.  But before he could wonder any more his breath was quite taken away by the shout those little white children gave.

“Oh! oh! m-m! m-m!” they cried.

“How pretty!  How beautiful!  Oh, isn’t it lovely!”

He knew they must mean him, for all their shining eyes were looking straight at him.  He stood as straight as a mast, and quivered in every needle, for joy.  Presently one little weak child-voice called out,—­

“It’s the nicest Christmas tree I ever saw!”

And then, at last, the Little Fir Tree knew what he was; he was a Christmas tree!  And from his shiny head to his feet he was glad, through and through, because he was just little enough to be the nicest kind of tree in the world!

HOW MOSES WAS SAVED