'That's what you always say; but I'm tired of waiting, and I want so much to be happy.'
It had seemed as if people were very merry in the village down yonder, to-day. The one shop-window was turned into a bower of holly and evergreens, stuck all about with oranges and rosy apples. To almost every house some one had come home to spend Christmas among their own folk. The village-green was full of pleased faces, and shouting children, and laughter, and glad greetings. Couple after couple of happy lovers had met Hildred, and wished her a merry Christmas as they passed; and though she gave the wish back heartily, yet each time the great longing to be happy like the rest swelled higher in her heart.
All day she had been working with the other boys and girls at dressing the little old grey church for Christmas Day. They had twined green wreaths round the thick short pillars and over the low arches, and a bunch of holly was stuck in each corner of the square pews. Under the east window, woven in shining holly leaves and scarlet berries, the words gleamed out, 'Behold we bring you glad tidings of great joy.'
They were the last thing that met Hildred's eyes as she turned under the porch, and looked back into the church. And her heart went out to meet them. Will it not be forgiven her, that in her sore longing for 'glad tidings,' she passed over their grand meaning, the mighty message of joy unto all people, and took them to herself as an omen that some good news was coming to her at last?
Christmas certainly is not always a merry time. Nay, often it is sadder than all the rest of the year; and yet I believe that people must be beginning to grow old before they quite give up an unreasonable half-formed idea that they have in some sort a right to be happier than usual at Christmas. Old custom has linked the words 'merry' and 'Christmas' together, and it is hard to put them asunder in our thoughts, though in action it is easily done.
There is a great deal that makes Christmas look and sound cheerful;—roaring fires in farm-house kitchens; holidays from school and work; larders well stocked with Christmas cheer; the church bells, that ring their merriest peals, chiming and pealing, and clashing out every change that the ringers can put together.
And the dear old carols; their quaint rhymes set to music full of odd flourishes, familiar since the childish days when we lay wide awake on Christmas night, listening breathlessly to the voices in the distance, and doubting whether the 'angelick host' of which they sang could have made more melodious music.
We were great at Christmas carols in Wyncliffe. Everybody that could sing—and some that only thought they could—went down to the schoolhouse, for the few weeks before Christmas, on the nights that the singers practised.
Cuthbert and I had been 'waits' ever since we were little schoolboys, with small shrill voices that were always being left behind when the tune swept up suddenly to a high note far above our reach, or rolled down into a manly grumble somewhere in the very heart of the bass. Standing close together and singing with might and main, we could not hear our own voices, but could only see each other's mouths wide open. Our childish piping was buried out of hearing beneath the rude deep men's voices, and the clear notes of the women, the scraping flourishes of the fiddles, and the tones of the flute that whistled and stopped, and lost its way, and found it again, when nobody was expecting it, like a gust of wandering wind.
Things improved for us as time passed on. I played the violin myself in these latter days, and for several years Cuthbert's voice made the fortune, and was the great boast, of the waits. It was a story often told, how a stranger, hearing us sing one Christmas night, turned out to be the organist of Morechester Minster, and wanted Cuthbert afterwards to join the choir of the great church. We did not wonder. It was but natural. What musician would not have wished for that sweet rich voice of his, that seemed to blend all the others together and bring them into harmony?