'No use--no use!' he cries; 'such a perfectly beautiful thing as that no use! Why, it don't have ter be any use when it's so pretty.

It's jest ter look at an' love, an' be happy with!' Fancy sayin' that ter old Streeter! I'd like ter seen his face.

But Bill says that wa'n't half what the boy said.

He declared that 't was God's present, anyhow, that trees was; an' that the things He give us ter look at was jest as much use as the things He give us ter eat; an' that the stars an' the sunsets an' the snowflakes an' the little white cloud-boats, an' I don't know what-all, was jest as important in the Orchestra of Life as turnips an' squashes.

An' then, Billy says, he ended by jest flingin' himself on ter Streeter an' beggin' him ter wait till he could go back an' git his fiddle so he could tell him what a beautiful thing that tree was.
"Well, if you'll believe it, old Streeter was so plum befuzzled he sent the man an' the axe away--an' that tree's a-livin' ter-day--'t is!" he finished; then, with a sudden gloom on his face, Larson added, huskily: "An' I only hope I'll be sayin' the same thing of that boy--come next month at this time!" "We'll hope you will," sighed the other fervently.
And so one by one the days passed, while the whole town waited and while in the great airy "parlor bedroom" of the Holly farmhouse one small boy fought his battle for life.