"Hark! the herald angels sing,
Glory to the newborn King!"
A slight noise behind made them turn round, and there the children beheld with indignation the whole body of the servants grouped together on the landing, most of them with their handkerchiefs to their eyes; while Jane Housemaid who had none, was sobbing undisguisedly with the tears rolling down her cheeks, and vainly endeavouring to express her opinion that "it was just beautiful—they was for all the world like little angels a-praisin' God, and—a-hoo! I can't help it, no more I can't! And their mother never to see them growed up—her bein' in her grave, the blessed lamb!"
"I don't see nuffin to kye for," said Toady Lion unsympathetically, trying to find pockets in Prissy's night-gown; "it was a nice sing-song!"
At this moment Janet Sheepshanks came on the scene. She had been crying more than anybody, but you would never have guessed it. And now, perhaps ashamed of her own emotion, she pretended great scandal and indignation at the unseemly and irregular spectacle, and drove the servants below to their morning tasks, being specially severe with Jane Housemaid, who, for some occult reason, found it as difficult to stop crying as it had been easy to begin—so that, as Hugh John said, "it was as good as a watering-can, and useful too, for it laid the dust on Jane's carpets ready for sweeping, ever so much better than tea-leaves."
CHAPTER XXVII
THE BANTAM CHICKENS.