The Noise of the World by Adriana Spadoni

After days of tentative discussion, Hilary Wainwright decided on Christmas Eve to have a Christmas tree at his office for the children of the striking stevedores who loaded his sugar fleet. When he announced the decision Roger almost flatly refused to have anything to do with it.

"The children really should not be made to pay for their fathers' obstinacy," Hilary said, and recalled to Roger the sanctimonious aunt who had brought him up, trying to force a cookie on him after she had unjustly spanked him.

"Why not settle the strike? " he suggested, without looking at Hilary. "The men are only asking ten cents an hour more, and the right to organize."

He felt Hilary's lips compress, exactly like that aunt's, and wanted to laugh, although he was angry and disgusted.

"The matter is being arbitrated, and, in the meantime, Christmas is here. I don't like to think of children unmerry on Christmas day."

"It would be uncomfortable," Roger said in a tone that made Hilary glance at him with the look of a financier considering an uncertain investment. But, whatever Hilary Wainwright's reaction to Roger's tone, he dismissed it and said pleasantly:

"I guess we'll have to deliver the invitations personally. There's not enough time for notes. Could you take half? I have the names and addresses. They all live rather close together."

For a moment Roger hesitated. Then he agreed.

"I can probably cover the lot. They all live in one section."

Hilary nodded. "That would be great, if you can."

Years afterwards, when Roger recalled the thing that had made him most ashamed of himself before men, it was this house-to-house canvass of Hilary Wainwright's stevedores.

They all lived in mean, dilapidated buildings, down close to the great wharves, on narrow side-streets, never free from the smell of tar and bilge water and refuse. The men were mostly physical giants, with badly shaped heads, small, close-set eyes, and brutal mouths. The women were worn and dull, although here and there, among those with fewer children, faint traces of an anemic, youthful prettiness were fading to shrewish angles and deep lines about the pale lips. The children were dirty and sharp-eyed, with the shifting look and the quick, darting movements of children who live in the streets, dodging policemen and irate parents and passing trucks.

The men glared sullenly at Roger, and, for the most part, made no comment. Some of the women reviled Hilary Wainwright in gutter speech; some were confused; none were grateful. But in the end, they all accepted. If the "kids" did not go to this tree, they would have none. The kids would like it.

On Christmas morning Anne went to the office and helped with the tree. It was the finest that Hilary could find and weighted under innumerable, if cheap, presents, and bags of candy and lights. It was finished a little before twelve, and the clerks and clerks' wives who had helped stood back and admired it.

"It's a lot better than my children are going to have," one woman whispered to Anne.

"It really is pretty, isn't it, Roger? " Anne had enjoyed hanging the thick, silver tinsel and concealing the colored electric globes in the most effective places.

"Yes. It's pretty. " Roger had made up his mind to see the thing through decently, but it was difficult.

The lights were switched on for a trial view; every one exclaimed "O-h," and, after other appropriate remarks of appreciation for the beauty of the tree, and Hilary's generosity, left. Anne came close to Roger.

"Next year," she whispered, "we're going to have one exactly like this, only a teeny, weeny one, aren't we?"

Roger did not answer, but as Hilary called to him just then, Anne did not notice. In a moment Roger returned.