The poor mother sat by the feeble light of a candle, the wick burned nearly down to the bottle which served for a candlestick. She was sewing on a coarse garment that she wanted to finish, in order to buy bread for the children with the few pennies she would get for it.
All that any of them had eaten that day was some candy that Janet had slyly put in their mouths, not letting them know where she kept it. Janet went to her mother, the poor, tired, sick woman, and, bidding her open her mouth, she fed her with sweet chocolate and brought her a drink of water.
Then she sat down by the suffering woman, and hugged her poor cold feet to her heart, trying to warm them. In a low voice, so as not to waken the sleeping children, she gave her mother a description of the beautiful tree, and how the Bishop had given her the stockings himself.
“I take them off and hide them when I get home,” she said, “so father will not sell them; and the candy I hid last night under my pile of straw—that’s how I had these good chocolates for you now.”
And then she repeated again to her mother the words of the good Bishop, “Remember, keep yourself pure and clean to the end of your life.”
The mother swallowed hard, as though her throat hurt her, and she became deadly pale.
“Oh, mother!” said the child, “the Bishop has made me feel so happy—and even this old garret looks better than it did, because I am so happy.”
The mother said: “I feel peaceful and happy too while I listen to you. You make my thoughts go back to when I was a little girl. I remember a hymn I used to sing in Sunday-school.” And in a broken way, gasping for breath, she repeated the last two lines:
“Cover my—defenceless head
With the shadow—of—Thy wing.”