Angel Unawares: A Story of Christmas Eve

								

Angel was wondering which turn to take, Angel's mother was writing:
"Mademoiselle is young and pretty, but as trustworthy as if she
were a hundred. She never loses sight of the Angel-Imp for an
instant."
The Angel-Imp in question wished that streets going inland from the
Promenade du Midi didn't look so much alike. They all seemed to
have rivers or gardens running up the middle, and pointed blue
mountains at the back, except the ones farther along, where the
shops were. Angel remembered a bridge. She thought the right turn
was near. Yes, that must be the street! You walked along that for a
while, and then you had to turn again. You passed villas with
gardens.
By and by Angel forgot to look for landmarks; there were so many
things which amused her: children riding on donkeys led by brown
old women in funny hats like toadstools; a flock of very white
sheep with long, silky hair, being driven by a fur-coated boy into
an olive wood; bands of soldiers black as jet, wearing queer red
caps on their woolly heads. It was all so interesting and exciting
that when Angel remembered herself she was not quite sure she knew
where she was.
This would have been rather frightening if the realization
hadn't come just outside the half-open gates of a garden lovely
as fairy-land. It had been winter in Paris. Here it was summer;
yet to-morrow was going to be Christmas. Angel could not understand.
The thing was like a dream, and held her fascinated. She was an
imaginative child, and it thrilled her to say to herself, "Maybe
this garden is fairyland!" Although, of course, the common-sense
side of her answered, "Pooh! You know very well, you silly, there's
no such place."
Anyhow, the garden looked like fairyland. It was exactly what
fairyland ought to be; and even mother (who was a grown-up, though
father often called her "child") said that no really nice person
would swear there weren't any fairies in the world.
Hundreds and maybe thousands of orange and lemon trees made a
sparkling green roof for a carpet of purply-blue violets, white
carnations, and roses of every shade from palest coral pink to
deepest crimson. The flowers grew in the midst of young grass which
the sun, shining through tree-branches, lit with the vivid green of
emeralds. It shone also on the countless globes of the oranges and
lemons, making them glow like lighted lamps of pale topaz and
transparent red-gold among the dark-green leaves.
"Fairy Christmas trees!" thought Angel Odell. And it seemed to her
that the invisible hand of an equally invisible fairy clutched her
dress and began to pull her through the open gateway. After all,
why should the gates be open if people were not expected to walk
into the garden?
"I don't care. I will go in, whether it's fairyland or not,"
Angel decided.
Nothing else seemed important except the garden and what might
happen to her there when she had once got past the gates. Not