Mr. and Mrs. Merrill were going with the children, but they would sit in the back of the church. Lucy and Dora were to sit with their class. The class was to sit in pew twenty-eight.
There had been many things to do that afternoon, and nobody looked out until they started for church. When the door shut behind the Merrill family, everybody was surprised.
Christmas came on a moonlight night that year, but in addition to the moon, at almost every house the porch light was shining, and the ordinary electric bulbs had been unscrewed and red ones substituted. All up and down the streets shone the pretty red lights.
“Oh, Mother!” said Lucy. “I wish our house had one. But it is only gas, and none at all on the porch.”
Mrs. Merrill thought a minute. The red lights did look pretty. In the front windows of the brown cottage hung Christmas wreaths but there was no light behind them.
“Wait for me a bit,” she said, and she went back into the cottage.
Lucy and Dora wondered what she was going to do. A group of young people went by. They were singing softly and Father began to sing with them. When Father was a young man, he used to belong to the choir.
“It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
Of angels bending near the earth,