There were bright tears glittering in her soft eyes for all that, and Dorothy kissed her almost reverently.
"Well—I'll take one of your texts, if I can't take the other!" she said, "At present!"
"God must teach you Himself," said Mary, "and then you will be able!"
[CHAPTER V.]
ROBBIE'S CHRISTMAS EVE.
"WHY, Mother, it is almost as light as day!" said Robin, as the two came out from the shade of the trees close to the village church. "I was never out so late before. Look at the church clock, it's just upon a quarter past eleven."
"Yes," said his mother, trying to quicken her tired footsteps; "and we'll soon be home now, Robbie."
"I don't care," said Robin, a little sadly. "I was never so old as this before, and I thought Christmas was always a happy day to everybody, and I'm sure it won't be to us to-morrow, Mammie! We've got nothing to keep it with, and then there's father so ill, too."
"Yes, Robbie, I know that—" she assented, settling her great bundle of sticks more firmly in her arms, "but the Lord has been speaking to me while I've been picking up the sticks in the moonlight, and I feel less tired."
"Has He?" asked Robin in a voice of awe. He had been a very wretched little boy all that bright, crisp, Christmas Eve; like Christian and Hopeful, he had got into Doubting Castle, and Giant Despair had been beating him about cruelly! He had looked round on his circumstances, and had decided they were too hard to bear. There was mother with that tired face working for them all, and tidying up "for Christmas," as she said, waiting on their sick father, and washing and mending their threadbare clothes once again. He had looked in the cupboard and not a bit of fresh food for Christmas fare appeared to be there. He had peeped in the corners of the kitchen and shed, but no surprises lay anywhere that he could see.