Be born in us to-day.
We hear the Christmas angels
The great, glad tidings tell
Oh, come to us, abide with us;
Our Lord Emmanuel!’”
The girl’s clear voice sounded softly through the quiet parlor, with its trimmings of evergreen and holly, carrying two of her listeners back to more than one Christmas Eve in the past.
All in all, Christmas Eve was almost as nice as Christmas itself, Blue Bonnet decided that night, sitting on the hearth-rug before the fire in her own room. Then her face grew suddenly wistful. It was not so many years ago that her mother had sat on this same hearth-rug, thinking of the joys to come on the morrow, while the clock on the mantel ticked away the moments bringing the great day of days nearer and nearer.
Solomon was the first to give her Christmas greeting the next morning, choosing Christmas for his first venture above stairs before breakfast; aided and abetted therein by Delia. Sure, and the child should have somebody to talk to on Christmas morning—and Solomon was wiser than a deal of humans.
He received warm welcome; Blue Bonnet was sitting up in bed, a little square, pasteboard box in her hand. “I found it under my pillow,” she told the ever-curious Solomon. “Now how did Grandmother smuggle it in without my knowing it?”
She slipped the slender gold band with its one deep, dark blue stone on her finger. “Isn’t it pretty, Solomon?”