“Ver pret,” she said, pointing to the great branch of holly, with its red berries glowing among the glossy leaves, which Bessie had suspended over the top of her little bed, “ver—pret.”
“Yes, my darling, they are ver—ver pret,” answered Bessie, while she took off Lally’s finery, and laid her down among the snowy napery; and when all that was done, and Lally was tucked up for the night, Bessie took her seat beside the bed, and told the child, as well as she could, what event the holly berries were hung there to commemorate; told her how, more than eighteen centuries before, the wise men came to worship at Bethlehem, and how the star had gone before them, and stood over the manger where Jesus was laid.
“That is why we hang our houses with holly branches, Lally,” Bessie went on, “because to-morrow is the birthday of One who loved us all exceedingly. Do you understand me, pet?”
“Iss,” was the reply, “Lally does; Lally heard all that before long ago, that is why we have plum-pudden too.”
Rather disheartened at this view of the question, Bessie observed, that when people were glad they prepare a feast, and “make merry,” and that plum-pudding happened to be part of the good things provided at Christmas.
“Did He have dood tings?” Lally immediately inquired, with the terrible perception of the incongruous, which makes it so difficult to talk to children on serious subjects in connection with their daily life.
Altogether, it seemed to Bessie that she had better have left her religious instruction alone; but she had gone too far to recede, and accordingly she answered that “He had been poorly lodged, poorly fed, evilly treated while He remained on earth; that though He had done so much for men, men had used Him despitefully, and mocked and forsaken Him. But He loved little children, Lally,” finished Bessie, “and so, when you look at the holly berries, you must always think of Him. He was so good, Lally, that Child born eighteen hundred years ago. He was so good!”
“Are you dood, Bessie?” asked the little creature.
“No, my darling, I am not; I wish I were; oh! Lally, I wish I were!”
“You are dood to Lally,” was the encouraging reply. “Bessie, I do love ’oo; thing to I, please; thing I to thleep.”