The Twentieth Window. Midwinter Eve. The Little Girl had spent so many Christmases ill or convalescing in bed, it had become a family tradition to decorate a tree in her room, usually by the long windows which looked out over the parkland. That year, her bed was made neatly in the morning & only slept in at night, and she was well enough to help her Aunt. Together they dressed the little spruce with all their favourites – sweet oranges studded with cloves, scarred & play-worn wooden penguins and foxes & ermines & doves from the nursery chest, a battered old train engine once owned by her father, a dozen bold flags of elven-realms, strings of dried apples from Old Fox's orchards, baubles & pom-poms & festoons of paper flowers, delicate Japanese chōchin from Liberty's, a papier-mâché model of Felix the Cat and a protective fairy queen, dressed in silver brocade & carrying a wand of gilded hazel.