But Dinah, having heaved her moan, merely shuddered and was still again.
"Just fancy, Dick," the little one went on, "it happened in a chall like ours!" She was quiet for a moment, her eyes fixed on the glossy rumps of the cows. Then, turning quickly—"I know about it, and I'll show you. Dick, you must be Saint Joseph, and I'll be the Virgin Mary. Wait a bit—"
Her quick fingers began to undress the sailor-doll and fold his clothes carefully. "I meant to christen him Robinson Crusoe," she explained, as she laid the small garments, one by one, on the straw; "but he can't be Robinson Crusoe till I've dressed him up again." The doll was stark naked now, with waxen face and shoulders, and bulging bags of sawdust for body and legs.
"Dick," she said, folding the doll in her arms and kissing it— "St. Joseph, I mean—the first thing we've got to do is to let people know he's born. Sing that carol I heard you trying over last week— the one that says 'Far and far I carry it.'"
So I sang, while she rocked the babe:—
'Naked boy, brown boy,
In the snow deep,
Piping, carolling
Folks out of sleep;
Little shoes, thin shoes,
Shoes so wet and worn'—
'But I bring the merry news
—Christ is born!
Rise, pretty mistress,
In your smock of silk;
Give me for my good news
Bread and new milk.
Joy, joy in Jewry,
This very morn!
Far and far I carry it
—Christ is born!'
She heard me with a grave face to the end; then pulling a handful of straw, spread it in the empty manger and laid the doll there. No, I forget; one moment she held it close to her breast and looked down on it. The God who fashions children can tell where she learnt that look, and why I remembered it ten years later, when they let me look into the room where she lay with another babe in her clay-cold arms.
"Count forty," she went on, using the very words of Pretty Tommy, our parish clerk: "count forty, and let fly with 'Now draw around—'"
"Now draw around, good Christian men,
And rest you worship-ping—"