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On the threshold he paused to listen. Yes, it was the Woman. It was the first time she had been happy enough to sing since she had been cast out of Eden. But her song was entirely different from anything that she had sung before. It was more little and tender. It was a lullaby of mother-nonsense, which she hummed when she couldn't find the proper rhymes and made up as she went along.
As the robin fluttered through the gloom to her shoulder, she pressed her finger to her lips to warn him. The baby eyes were the merest slits of blueness. The little thumb was in the mouth and the baby lips were sucking hard. The tiny knees were digging into the Woman's body and the baldy head was cushioned on her bosom. The dog snoozed across her feet. The Man crouched against her, shrouded in the mantle of her hair, overcome with weariness. She was mothering them all, rocking herself slowly and singing gently her silly little song. The crooning of it over and over seemed to hush them with a sense of security.
"You are my ownty,
Dear little donty,
Sweetest and wonty,
Pudding and pie;
Good little laddie,
Just like your daddie.
Fallen from Heaven,
Come from the sky."
"But he didn't," whispered the robin.
The Woman paused in her singing. "Didn't what?"
"He didn't fall from Heaven. God's just been telling me; He never heard about him."
The Woman smiled. "Never heard about him! It doesn't matter; his Mummy's heard about him." She stooped to kiss the soft little bundle, for he had commenced to stir. Then she resumed her singing.
Gradually the day failed. The late afternoon faded into evening. Gray twilight stole swiftly down. For a while the white fields of snow outside reflected a vague dimness; then night came with a noiseless rush, closing up the entrance to the cave with a wall of blackness.
Perched on the Woman's shoulder the robin dozed. She still went on singing. How long he had been dozing he had no means of telling. He was wakened by a multitudinous rustling, as of a crowd assembling and drawing nearer. At first he thought that it was some of the more persistent of the animals, coming once more to urge the Woman to tell them how babies happened. Then, of a sudden, he knew that he had been mistaken. The gloom of the cave was lit up by a glowing brightness. Peering across the threshold, with all the haloed hosts of Heaven tiptoeing behind her, was the Virgin Mary. It was the crowd of haloes that was causing so much brightness.
Stepping to the Woman's side, she gazed down longingly at the small God-Man.
"I want one. Oh, I want one so badly," she murmured.
The angels, thronging behind her, folded their wings and repeated her words, "So badly! So badly!" The sound was like a prayer, dying out in the void which spreads between earth and Heaven.
"Let me hold him," she begged.
Because she was the Virgin, even though it might wake him, the Woman did not dare to refuse her. But she asserted her authority, as all mothers must, by pretending that she was the only person who knew how to hold him properly. And perhaps she was the only one at that moment, for there was no other mother besides herself in earth or Heaven. She showed the Virgin how to support his little head because it was wobbly; and how to keep one arm beneath his back because it was weak; and how he liked to be cuddled against her breast because it was warm and cushiony. And then, becoming generous, she taught her the silly little lullaby.
"I shall never go back to Heaven," the Virgin whispered. "I shall stay here always and help you nurse him."
"Never go back to Heaven," the angels echoed; "stay here always."
The Woman's eyes became troubled. "But I want him to myself," she faltered. "I don't want helping." Then she ceased to frown, for she had discovered a stronger argument. "Besides, what about God? You wouldn't leave Him all by Himself in Heaven. He'd be lonely."
The Virgin nodded her head vigorously. "I would, for I also am a woman. There are no babies in Heaven. I couldn't be happy without a baby."
Behind her the angels nodded their haloes. "No babies in Heaven. Couldn't be happy without a baby."
It must have been so much talking that disturbed him; the baby woke up. As he opened his eyes and saw the Queen of Heaven bending over him, he smiled. It was his first smile. On the instant the Woman, like all mothers, became jealous and snatched him back into her own possession. She liked to believe that no one, not even the Man, could make him as comfortable as she could. Piling her golden hair upon her knees to make a pillow for him, she laid him naked on his back and commenced playing with his toes. If he had not given her his first smile, she would at least make certain of his second.
She was so taken up with her playing that she did not notice who had entered. She was the only one who had not noticed. The angels were cowering against the walls of the cave. The Man had roused and crouched covering his face with his hands. Only the Virgin stood upright, meek and fearless, with a look of unconquerable challenge. The Woman was quite oblivious; she went on with her mother-nonsense. And there stood God regarding her through a cloud of puzzlement and anger.
The game that she played with the baby-feet she was inventing on the spur of the moment. Starting with the tiniest toe, she wiggled it. Then she wiggled the next tiniest, and the next tiniest, and the next tiniest, till she had come to the biggest of the tiny toes. To each toe as she wiggled it, she gave a name; when she had wiggled them all she buried her face in the fat, kicking legs.
"And this is Peedy Peedy," she said as she wiggled the littlest toe. "And this next babiest is Polly Loody. And this in the middle is Lady Fissle. And this tall fellow is Lally Vassal. And last we come of the big, big toe, who's king of them all. His name is Great Ormondon." Then she dived her lips into the little squirming legs and kissed them as if she were going to make a meal of them.
She had to do it four times before the baby smiled at her. At first he only looked serious and astonished. The fifth time his smile broadened and he gurgled. But the sixth, as she came to "The Great Ormondon," he burst into a crowing laugh. Never before had a laugh been heard in earth or Heaven. It was so surprising that the angels ceased from cowering and the Man uncovered his face to see better.
Then God spoke. His voice was kind and tender like the cooing of doves—so kind and tender that the Woman, discovering His presence, wasn't a bit frightened. Sweeping the hair back from her eyes, she nodded to Him in the old friendly fashion in which she had been used to greet Him in Eden.
"Can you make him do it again?" God asked.
He came nearer and leant above her shoulder. So she made the baby laugh again.
"Could I make him?"
"Try," said the Woman.
So God wiggled the little toes, starting with the tiniest, and the Woman whispered the five magic names to Him secretly so that He might say them all correctly. "Peedy Peedy. Polly Loody. Lady Fissle. Lally Vassal. And the Great Ormondon."
When God boomed out the last large sounding name, the baby doubled his little fists, crowing and laughing unmistakably. Then God laughed, too, and the Virgin, and all the Hosts of Heaven, and the Man and the Woman, till at last the dog and the robin couldn't restrain themselves any longer and joined in His laughter. When once they'd started laughing it was difficult to stop. Besides, they didn't want to stop. They were doing it for the first time and they liked the feeling of it. God laughed till the tears streamed down His face. By the time He held up His hand for silence, there was scarcely an angel who wasn't wearing his halo crooked.
"That's done us all good," said God. "I must have a baby for my very own exactly like him. I almost think that everybody ought to have babies." Then catching sight of the dog and the robin, He added, "I mean the animals, too."
He turned to the Man. "What day is this? I've not been counting since I ceased to walk in Eden."
The Man answered humbly. "Dear God, it is the twenty-fifth of December."
"I must remember that," said God thoughtfully. And then to the Virgin, "Come. It grows late. There is no one to light the lamps of Heaven. You shall have your desire; for you, too, are a woman."
And the robins say that God did remember, for it was on the twenty-fifth of December, centuries later, that his own son was born into the world. They say that the limestone ridge within sight of Eden was the spot where Bethlehem grew up after Eden vanished. They even say that the cave to which Mary came on another winter's night, when the doors of the inn had been closed against her, was the very same. There, where the world's first baby had been born, she wrapped God's son in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, for the cave had now become a stable. Perhaps the heavenly host who sang "Peace and Goodwill" to the shepherds was the same, though the robins do not assert that.
Of one thing they are certain: that every time a baby is born God laughs again and His laughter travels down the ages. And that is why on Christmas Day everyone is especially kind to children, because it was a little child who gave the first laugh and taught grown people, even God Himself, how easy it is to love when one is merry.