"Yes, it's true for those who are like you and your mother."
She leaned against him, and looked over his shoulder at the pictures. "Mr. Alvord, mamma said the song was for you, too. Of course, mamma's right. What else did He come for but to help people who are in trouble? I read stories about Him every Sunday to mamma, and He was always helping people who were in trouble, and who had done wrong. That's why we are always glad on Christmas. You look at the book while I set your table."
He did look at it till his eyes were blinded with tears, and like a sweet refrain came the words. "A little child shall lead them."
Half an hour later Leonard, with a kindly impulse, thought he would go to take by the hand Johnnie's strange friend, and see how the little girl was getting on. The scene within, as he passed the window, checked his steps. Johnnie sat at the foot of Mr. Alvord's table, pouring tea for him, chattering meanwhile with a child's freedom, and the hermit was looking at her with such a smile on his haggard face as Leonard had never seen there. He walked quietly home, deferring his call till the morrow, feeling that Johnnie's spell must not be broken.
An hour later Mr. Alvord put Johnnie down at her home, for he had insisted on carrying her through the snow, and for the first time kissed her, as he said:
"Good-by. You, to-night, have been like one of the angels that brought the tidings of 'peace and good-will.'"
"I'm sorry for him, mamma!" said the little girl, after telling her story, "for he's very lonely, and he's such a queer, nice man. Isn't it funny that he should be so old, and yet not know why we keep Christmas?"
Amy sang again the Christmas hymn that her own father and the father who had adopted her had loved so many years before. "My daughter," said Mr. Clifford, as he was fondly bidding her good-night, "how sweetly you have fulfilled the hopes you raised one year ago!"
Mrs. Clifford had gone to her room, leaning on the arm of Gertrude. As the invalid kissed her in parting, she said:
"You have beautiful eyes, my dear, and they have seen far more of the world than mine, but, thank God, they are clear and true. Keep them so, my child, that I may welcome you again to a better home than this."