“God rest you, merry gentlemen,
Let nothing you may dismay,
For Jesus Christ our Savior
Was born this happy day!”
Martha and her mother looked at each other with faces suddenly grown pale, and listened with unbelieving ears. The song changed as the singers swung into the measures of a new carol. Surely these were human voices and not a band of fairies! The mother crept silently to the window and looked out.
* * * * * *
When the last note of the songs had died away the door of the dark house opened and a woman came out on the steps. “Thank you a thousand times for the singing,” she said. “Won’t you come in where my daughter can see you? She won’t believe you are real. She is so sick and lonesome. Please do.”
The Winnebagos started in surprise and looked at each other somewhat doubtfully. They had not been aware that they were singing to an audience. It was getting near the time when they should be meeting the rest of the group. But this was Christmas Eve and here was a girl sick and lonesome——
“Let’s go in for a minute,” said Gladys and Hinpoha together. They went in, singing as they went, and swinging their little lighted lanterns.
Martha’s mother lit the one pale little gas flame, for they had been sitting in the dark before, and by its light the girls saw the shabby room and the wan girl lying on the bed. So amazed was Martha at the sudden appearance of the carolers out of the night that she forgot to be shy, and before she knew it she had told them all about the Christmas Eve game she and her mother had been playing and how they had set the imaginary candle in the window. And all of the six months’ loneliness was in that little tale, and the girls as they listened became afflicted with a queer weakness of the eyes that made them turn their faces away from the light. Over on the lighted avenue the twinkling candles beckoned in the gleaming windows of the most beautiful homes in the city; still farther on the revellers at the singers’ party stretched out gay hands to them; but over it all each one seemed to see the words of the Fire Law written in letters made of Christmas stars: