“Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!” shouted the astonished children, as, jumping for joy, they gathered up their gifts.
“Merry Christmas!” lisped a small boy with a flaxen head, sturdily clambering up to the window from the lawn a couple of feet below, and looking boldly in the face of the world’s celebrated Rich Man;—“God Bless You!”
And the Rich Man answered gently:
“God bless you, little man!”
Then the whole group of young folks, determined to do the best they could for what they had received, burst out again in lusty chorus:
“God rest you, merry Gentle Man!
Let nothing you dismay!
Remember Christ our Saviour
Was born on Christmas Day!”
And Josiah McNason, listening quietly, while the old carol was sung through, saw, as he gazed beyond the children’s faces into the Christmas morning sunshine, a tiny Shape slowly disappearing into space—a Shape so delicate as to seem no more than one of the sunbeams,—while a voice, fine and far, yet clear as a flute said: