“I don’t; I’m just going to do it,” Cis laughed. “If I impersonated an angel I’d be out of sight, that’s sure!”
“In a slang sense?” suggested Mr. Lancaster. “Will you sing now what you’ll sing then to the children, please, Miss Cis!”
“Oh, goodness!” sighed Cis, but she promptly arose. “All right; I will. It’s the quickest way to prove I can’t! But I can’t play; Miss Braithwaite plays it.”
“Not when Anselm is here,” said Miss Braithwaite. “Play ‘The Snow Lay on the Ground’; play it in F, and harmonize it beautifully, because I intend you to play it for Cis to-morrow night.”
Anselm Lancaster sat down before the dark instrument that reflected the fire and electric light in its shining case. He struck a few chords meditatively, then he went on to play the simple, lovely air over and over, surrounding it with new harmonies, varying it, not as a fantasia, but by holding to its simplicity, its lyric pathos, enriching it with all the possibilities of a choral.
Cis stood listening, entranced.
“Isn’t that wonderful?” she sighed. “It’s all there, and yet nothing is there till you bring it out! I love that hymn!”
“There’s a pretty allegory tucked away in what you just said, Miss Adair, if you look for it. Now will you sing it for me?” said Mr. Lancaster, softly touching the keys.
Cis sang, and Anselm Lancaster for the unnumbered time in his knowledge of her, applauded Miss Braithwaite’s wisdom. Cis had a fresh, true young voice, round and sweet, with the quality in it of a boy’s; she had no method whatever, but sang as it had been given to her to sing, yet no artist could better have conveyed the effect of an unearthly narrator, telling the story of the First Christmas. It was a song like the flow of a mountain spring, or the shape of a northern pine, translated into sound.
“My dear Miss Adair, that was most beautiful!” Anselm cried sincerely. “It is exactly what it should be. You sound like one of the shepherd boys who sing that hymn on the mountains beyond Rome, or even like one of their pipes! And you speak every word so that the dullest boy will get it.”