Toward the middle of December, Clara began preparing for Christmas. The aroma of gingerbread and other sweet-smelling treats floated through the hotel every day as she and Hannah filled the cellar with baked goods. Soon pine boughs appeared in the hotel entry as well as over the dining room windows.
Clara had seen a box of ornaments in the cellar, and imagining a Christmas tree in a corner of the dining room, she asked Yoshiro to hitch up the sleigh and bring back a small conifer. Yoshiro had learned about Christmas trees the previous December when the hotel’s owner helped him find a tree of the proper size and shape. True to a tradition he hadn’t grown up with in Japan, he returned with a healthy six-foot spruce.
Mr. Beale was eating supper when the hotel’s eager young handy-man dragged the tree into the dining room. He finished his coffee, and then helped Yoshiro build a simple wood stand for the tree. After making sure the tree stood perfectly straight, Mr. Beale returned to his table and finished his meal.
Sophie, her moon face beaming, walked into the dining room carrying the box of Christmas ornaments. She set it on the floor, and then reached into the box and pulled out a green glass ornament which she attached to a branch with a piece of red ribbon.
Mr. Beale pulled out his pocket watch. “I don’t have to go to work for a few minutes" he said to Sophie. "May I help you hang those ornaments?”
Sophie shrugged her shoulders and gave him a puzzled look. “No
know.”
Thinking Sophie might not have enough grasp of English to understand what he wanted, he walked into the kitchen and asked Clara who was sitting on a stool, peeling potatoes.
“I’d be pleased if you’d let me help decorate the tree, Mrs. Reese. I don’t have to leave for half an hour.” His dark brown eyes, droopy at the corners, sparkled with the glee of a young boy.
Clara felt her face redden. Not only had she been nosing around this man’s reading material when she cleaned his room, he had been sneaking into her dreams of late, dreams she pooh-poohed as some strange manifestation of Rocky Mountain altitude sickness.
“That would be kind of you, Mr. Beale.” She went back to peeling the potato she had been working on.
“Will you tell the maid and the Japanese boy I am allowed?”
Clara put down the potato and wiped her hands on a towel. With Yoshiro and Sophie watching, she took one of the ornaments out of the box and handed it to the night watchman, nodding and smiling while he hung it on a branch.
Yoshiro grinned broadly. Pointing at the ceiling, he said, “Up now, Missus,” and then he hurried outside to shovel snow off the roof.
With quiet resolve, Sophie squatted next to the box of ornaments and picked out several of the prettiest ones before Mr. Beale could get his hands on them.
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