And happy they all were that night. No tragedy met them at the Murchison home, whither all except Betty drove after dinner and a reasonable interval. Betty met Lucia and the other girls, who were taking part in the carols, at the big “Y” building.
Lovely, lovely Christmas Eve! So thought Betty as they started in the machines for the different points at which they were to sing “especially,” though the voices rang out all along the way in the beautiful Christmas music. It was still snowing by fits and starts, though not enough to cover the ground as yet. The lights of the city, the soft flakes of snow, and a bright sky above, helped make the Christmas atmosphere; for there were only drifting clouds as yet and behind them, beyond them, or through them shone the starlight.
They stopped at one place where there was a sanitarium in the poorer part of the city. Windows came up a little to make the words and music more clear to the listeners, not only where invalids were lying in their cots, but in the houses nearby. Betty saw a light flash out from a first floor window and glancing in she could see a delicate hand manipulating a lamp, adjusting its wick to the proper height. No gas or electricity there!
The light outlined clearly the head and face of the young woman who was bending over a table, then turning to speak to someone, for whom, perhaps, the light was made. Black hair was gathered into a low knot. Large black eyes looked toward the window. A gay scarf or small shawl of some sort lay on the table. Catching up this, the girl came to the window, threw it up, tossed the scarf around her head and shoulders, drawing it tightly around her face, and looked out.
The glare from a street light fell upon her face for a moment. Sober, almost tragic, the big eyes looked out upon the singers.
They had been singing several short carols but were giving the Christmas hymn beginning,
“Thou didst leave thy throne and thy kingly crown When thou camest to earth for me.”
And now, as the girl from the rickety lower window of a tall tenement looked out, Betty thought how appropriate, some way, was the stanza they were singing then, here where the people had so little. Lucia’s rich contralto joined Betty’s sweet voice, as they were close to each other, and made the words as distinct as possible for a group to make them:
“The foxes found rest, and the bird their nest
In the shade of the forest tree;
But thy couch was the sod, O thou Son of God,
In the deserts of Galilee.
O come to my heart, Lord Jesus!
There is room in my heart for thee.”
Betty felt that she was singing to that girl in the window and Lucia, too, was seeing her. But she listened only to the close of that stanza then put down the window; and before the young singers had finished, the light in the room had been extinguished.