Then they grew so earnest that the young voice would sometimes break with feeling.
“Blest are the sheep that follow you
Across the meadows green,
For their shepherdess, in her mantle blue,
Is like the Heavenly Queen.”
“Until the singing shells
On the margin of the sea
Give me counsel to forget,
I will remember thee.”
For a while they waxed resentful.
“Don’t act as if you were the Queen
Putting on such airs.
I don’t choose to reach my Love
By a flight of stairs.”
But soon they were triumphant.
“I thought thee a proud, white castle;
I neared thee with alarm;
And I find thee a tender little girl
Who nestles in my arm.”
The winter was colder than the children had ever known, but it brought the same gleeful Christmas, with its almond soup and cinnamon cake, the blessing of the house with rosemary, the dancing before the mimic Bethlehem and the putting out of stubby little shoes on the balcony, a wisp of hay beside them for the camels, that the Three Kings might be pleased and leave some friendly token—a few figs wrapped in a green leaf or a tiny fish made of marchpane—of their mysterious passing in the night. And after the family Christmas—“Every man in his own house and God in the house of all”—there were gatherings of neighbors to sing scores on scores of Holy Eve carols, and then the splendid celebration in the cathedral.
Aunt Barbara, by gentle persuasions of which she alone possessed the secret, induced Uncle Manuel to let her give liberal store of food and linen to households in need, and Tia Marta, out in the granite cottage, held Juanito close as she crooned:
“Where her happy heart was beating
Mary tucked her darling in,
Singing softly: ‘O my sweeting,
Love the poor and pardon sin.’ ”