'I want to do both,' said Mabel; 'I want to stay with the pretty tree, _and_ I want to go and ask him if he wants us.'
Mabel was still too small to understand thoroughly how hard it is, even for a grown-up person, to be in two places at once.
'Then I shall go with Phyllis,' said Mabel.
Both girls felt their hearts go quite pitter-pattery when at last they stood on the doorstep of the castle.
Mabel instantly knocked very loudly with a wooden ninepin-ball that she happened to have in her pocket.
'Oh, I _wish_ you hadn't!' said Phyllis; 'I wanted to think what to say first, and now there's no time.'
There certainly was not. The door opened a cautious inch, and a voice said:
'It's us,' said Phyllis, 'please. We don't want to pry into your beautiful house like Jane's brother Alf when he asked you for the drink of water, only we've made up a Christmas-tree, and may we stand it in your yard and light it--the candles, I mean?'
The door opened a little further, and a face looked out--the face, of course, of Sir Christopher. All the house that showed through the crack of the door didn't, as Mabel said afterwards, show at all, because it was pitch-dark.
'I don't quite understand,' said Sir Christopher gently. Phyllis was a little surprised to find that the voice was what she called a gentleman's voice.
'We--you were so kind carrying Mab across the road that water-carty day when it thundered----'
'Yes, it's us; and they wouldn't let us help with the school tree, and so we made one of our own and then we wanted someone to see it. And we thought of you, because you don't seem to have many friends, and we thought---- But we'll take it home again if you don't care about it.'
She stopped, just on the right side of tears.
'There's a glass bird with a spun-lovely tail,' said Mabel persuasively, 'and sweets and fishes, and a crocodile that goes waggle-waddle when you wind him up.'
'My dears,' said Sir Christopher, and cleared his throat. 'My dears,' he began again, and again he stopped.
'We'll go away if--if you'd rather,' said Phyllis, and sniffed miserably.
'No, no!' he said; 'no, no--I was only thinking. I never thought--would you like to bring the tree into the house? It's just the sort of thing my little girl always liked.'