And both were young

by Madeleine L'Engle

After tea the term marks were read out in Assembly Hall. Flip was third for her class with Solvei Krogstad first, and Maggie Campbell second. Then there was a scramble to change for dinner and when they got down to the dining room the huge fireplaces at either end were blazing and there was a big lighted Christmas tree in one of the bay windows. There was chicken for dinner, and all kinds of unaccustomed delicacies, and the tables were lit by candle-light, and Erna and Jackie called to Flip to come and sit with them so she didn't have to stand miserably around looking for a vacant seat as she used to do whenever there were unsupervised tables, and all through the meal they sang Christmas carols of all languages. As each group started a carol of its country, the others would try to join in, sometimes just humming along with the tune, sometimes picking up the words of the chorus. And the big room was full of warmth and light and happiness and Flip wanted to push back her chair and go about the room and hug everybody.

If it could just be like this always, she thought.

After dinner the faculty gave their annual play. They had written it themselves and in it they were all inmates of an Old Ladies Home. They had chosen girls from the different classes to be matrons and maids. Liz Campbell, Maggie's sister and one of the older girls, was the nurse, and convulsed them all by telling Fräulein Hauser she was just pretending to have a sore throat to get out of her walk. Kaatje van Leyden with a black wool wig and a uniform borrowed from Miss Tulip was the matron and scolded Madame Perceval for not making her bed properly and having untidy drawers. The girls took off the teachers and the teachers took off the girls and the audience screamed with laughter during an all too brief half hour.

Then, while the actors got out of costume there was a wild game of musical chairs played by the entire school, from the youngest to the oldest. Flip astonished herself and everybody else by being left by the last chair with Gloria, who had got there by the simple method of pushing everybody else out of the way; but finally Flip sat down in triumph while Gloria sprawled, defeated, but grinning, on the floor.

Then the phonograph was turned off and Mlle. Desmoulins, the music teacher, took her place at the piano. They sang more Christmas carols and the school song, during which Martha Downs and Kaatje van Leyden went about quietly turning out all the lights until the room was lit only by the fire and the candles on either side of the piano.

Mlle. Desmoulins started playing Auld Lang Syne and Gaudeamus Igitur, and the girls all crossed their arms and joined hands, making three big circles, one within the other, and sang in gentler voices than they had used all evening. And it did not seem strange to Flip, standing between Erna and Solvei, that tears were streaming down Erna's cheeks and her mouth trembling so that she could scarcely sing, nor that there was a quaver in Solvei's usually steady voice.

As they were getting ready for bed Erna turned to Flip and said with serious eyes, though her voice was bantering, "Flip, do something for me, will you?"

"Okay, what?"

"When you say your prayers tonight please pray that I won't have to go home for the spring holidays. I know they won't let me stay with Jackie but please pray that I can at least stay at school."

"Okay, Erna," Flip said. "If that's what you want I'll pray for it. But I'll pray that the holidays won't be as bad as you think they will, too, if you don't mind."