"I have just come from a house where since yesterday no one has eaten, where this night a child has died, and a girl lies sick in bed; two other children I found out in the snowstorm as they were admiring a Christmas tree. Can you not help?"
"Yes, yes, at once," cried the one with the gold brown locks. "Albert, be so good as to order the sledge. Cara, do you run to mother and ask her for money. I will get food and clothes."
With all imaginable speed every thing was got ready. After a brief half-hour the sledge stood before the door laden with wood and baskets, and one of the Christmas trees. There was barely room for the three young people to squeeze in. The mother, a stately, elegant woman, with wise eyes, restrained the eldest girl, Doris, for a second, to say something to her very earnestly, upon which she kissed both her hands. Then she, too, flew downstairs after the others, and as fast as the wind they trotted to the house of the poor people.
"Mother, the angels have come," cried the children.
They got out and brought in the tree. Cara knelt down by the hearth and made a fire, and Doris placed the tree by the bedside of the sufferer, darkened the room and lighted it. She gave the children bread and cake, and then the two lovely girls stood by the sick girl's bedside and sang a Christmas carol. The little boy, with folded hands, looked now at the lights, now at the angels, and large tears rolled over his pale face. Albert did not quite know what to do with himself; but now that the two girls helped the mother to warm some soup and cut up meat for the children, he neared the bed, and looked with scrutiny into the black eyes that glowed and reflected with uncanny fire the lights of the Christmas tree.
"What is your name?" he asked kindly with his pleasant voice.
The girl looked at him long and earnestly; she felt the gaze of his beautiful blue eyes burn into her heart. Then she grew red, cast down her eyes, and said: "Lotty."
Soon an animated conversation sprang up between the two. Albert took out his pocket-book, wrote a few lines, and sent off the servant with orders to bring the doctor back in the sledge. They would wait till he came. Doris's eyes rested for an instant on her cousin, who had seated himself on the edge of the bed and talked eagerly to Lotty. Scarcely was the sledge gone than she said—
"There, that will do for to-day; I will walk home. We will come again in a few days, till then you have provision."
And so speaking she walked out of the house, regardless of her cousin's remonstrances.