“Tell us a story, mother dear,” broke in Hal’s voice.
“Suppose you tell me one for a change, dear,” she replied.
“I don’t think I can, mother, but I’ll try,” said Hal’s determined tones, “it will be very hard, but you’ll help me, little Cis, when I stick, won’t you? Shall it be a real story or a made up one?”
“Oh! a real one, Hal, it won’t be so hard,” said little Cis.
“All right,” replied Hal, “just wait a moment whilst I think,” and the boy’s face took an earnest, thoughtful expression not often seen on it, for he was a light-hearted laddie full of the joy of a happy, careless childhood.
“We had three baby guinea-pigs this morning,” began he musingly, “but, I suppose I couldn’t make a tale out of that,—and the little white bantam was drowned in the duck-pond, and Cis and I put it in a box with flowers and buried it under the apple-tree, but, I suppose that wouldn’t do either;—and the parrot bit my fingers dreadfully, and I—no, I didn’t cry, I only howled. Oh! mother, you tell a tale, I can’t.”
Then a minute’s silence followed, broken only by the purring of Hal’s favourite, the black cat “Smut,” who was rubbing against his master’s leg, where the kneeless stocking told of the day’s exploits.
Darker grew the shadows in the long low room; the clock ticked on its monotonous “Gone by! gone by!” the faint whisper of the evening breeze through the pines came in at the window; the last rays died in the west, and once again the evening star looked out from the darkening sky upon the mother, and the child within her arms—a picture that in all its varied phases is as beauteous in our great to-day, as at that Christmas-time at Bethlehem in ages past. And little Cis, watching the shining star, raised her head from her mother’s shoulder, and said in a hushed voice:
“Do you think the angels will come to-night, mother dear?”