As to the teacher in trim shirt-waist, with pretty hands and hair, to whom the class recited in chorus, Bird longed to speak to her, to touch her, but she fled to a purer atmosphere as soon as school was out, and was remote as the stars.
As the weather grew cool, the fire-escape arbour was abandoned; they could spend less time out of doors, and Bird felt caged indeed. The engine-house now was the limit of their walks, for it grew dark very soon after school was out. Still they never tired of seeing the horses dash out, and Billy called Big Dave “my fireman,” and used to shout to him as he passed in the street. So the autumn passed.
******
It was a clear, cold afternoon a little before Christmas; the shops were gay with pretty things, and the streets with people. Billy was in a fever of excitement because his father, who had left home on a business trip a few days before, had promised him a Christmas tree, and Bird had gone out to buy the candles and some little toys to put on it, at a street stall. Billy, however, did not go, for he was not to see the toys until Christmas Eve.
Bird wandered across to Broadway at 23rd Street, and then followed the stream of shoppers southward. Was it only a year since last Christmas when she had helped trim the tree at Sunday-school in Laurelville and had sung the treble-solo part in—
“Watchman! tell us of the night;
What the signs of promise are.”
Would there ever again be any signs of promise for her? Somehow she had never before felt so lonely for her father as in that merry crowd. She wondered if he saw and was disappointed in her, and what Lammy was doing. Going up on the hill probably with the other village children to cut the Christmas tree and greens for church.
Not minding where she went, she followed the crowd on past and around Union Square and down town again. Then realizing that she was facing away from home and had not bought her candles, she looked up and saw on the opposite side of the street a beautiful gray stone church. At one side and joined to it was what looked like a house set well back from the street, from which it was separated by a wide garden. People were going in and out of the church by twos and threes.
A voice seemed to call Bird, and she too crossed Broadway and timidly pushed open the swinging door.
At first she could see nothing, as the only lights in the church were near the chancel. Then different objects began to outline themselves. There was no service going on, the people having come in merely for a few quiet moments.