“Yes, but—” and Connie hesitated a moment. “There is something we ought to do. Have a kind of service as they do in the church, only leave out ‘miserable sinners’; there’s so much of that. Jean took me to a Sunday-school tree last year and they had carols about the ‘Silent Nights,’ and ‘Hark, the Heralds,’ and ‘Peace on Earth,’ and what they believed. We ought to say that anyway, or sing something.”
Remembering the previous night and the Stir Up collect, Kenneth began to feel very crawly, and said, “I can’t sing.”
“I can. Listen,” was the quick response, as Connie began a carol familiar to her.
But her mouth was too full of sugar to allow of much execution, and after a few croaks she stopped, a little discomfited by her failure. Brightening soon, she said: “Any way we can bow our heads and say what we believe, only you must keep me going. Begin!”
She put her hands together and dropped her head and waited while Kenneth grew more and more crawly. This was worse than the Stir Up. In the church he had always attended he had never heard the Creed that he could remember; certainly he had never learned it, and he finally said so. Connie’s head came up with a jerk, and her eyes flashed as she exclaimed: “For the pity’s sake and the Old Harry, don’t you know about the ‘I believe,’ nor the ‘miserable sinners,’ nor anything?”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” Kenneth answered meekly. “But I’m going to if I can find the book which has these things in it. What is it?”
“Why, the Bible, of course,” Connie answered, with great assurance.
Kenneth didn’t think so. He had read the Bible through, hired to do so by his mother, and he could recall nothing of the “Stir Up” in it, or “I believe,” or “miserable sinners,” except in a general way. But there was a book somewhere which had it all, and some time he meant to get it and be posted.
As he had proved so incompetent to help her, Connie gave up the service she had thought necessary, and they were soon on their way home, Connie on the sled with her cloak tucked carefully around her, and in her lap the picture-book, skates, mittens and knife, and whatever of sugar and nuts and grapes she had not eaten. It was very muddy, and part of the way was up hill, but Kenneth never minded it all, and would have walked miles with his little chatty load, who was creeping into his boy’s heart so far that it was doubtful if the heart of man could ever dislodge her.
“The bestest Christmas I ever had,” was Connie’s verdict of a day which in after years would come back to her and to Kenneth both, over and over, with a wish that what had been might be again, although they knew that was impossible.