He picked up the tree, and held it erect by the topmost twig.

He felt the cold as he stood in the yard coatless, and he twitched his shoulders.
"Isn't it a beauty!" repeated Millicent.
"Ay!--lop-sided though." "Put something on, you two!" came the woman's high imperative voice, from the kitchen.
"We aren't cold," protested the girls from the yard.
"Come and put something on," insisted the voice.

The man started off down the path, the little girls ran grumbling indoors.

The sky was clear, there was still a crystalline, non-luminous light in the under air.
Aaron rummaged in his shed at the bottom of the garden, and found a spade and a box that was suitable.

Then he came out to his neat, bare, wintry garden.