He would not let Marie sweep them up to be burned, but gathered them carefully into a box and carried them home.

There were several things that he had rescued from her broom,--one of those beautiful red balls, cracked on one side it is true, but gleaming like a mammoth red cherry on the other.

There were scraps of tinsel and odds and ends of ornaments that had been broken or damaged by careless handling.

These he hid away in a chest in his room, as carefully as a miser would have hoarded a bag of gold.
Clotilde Robard, the housekeeper, wondered why she found his candle burned so low several mornings.

She would have wondered still more if she had gone into his room a while before daybreak.