"But, grandma, how could you live without Christmas trees and things?"
"I was happy enough, Alice."
"But you'd have been a great deal happier, grandma, if you'd had a Santa
Claus! It's so nice to believe what isn't true!"
"Ah! does thee think so? There was one thing I believed when I was a very little girl, and it was not true. I believed the cattle knelt at midnight on Christmas eve."
"Knelt, grandma? For what?"
"Because our blessed Lord was born in a manger."
"But they didn't know that. Cows can't read the Bible."
"It was an idle story, of course, like the one about Mother Knowles. A man who worked at our house, Israel Grossman, told it to me, and I thought it was true."
Here grandma gazed into the coals again. She could see Israel Grossman sitting on a stump, whittling a stick and puffing away at a short pipe.
"Well, children," said she, "I have talked to you long enough about things that are past and gone. On the whole, I don't say they were good old times, for the times now are a great deal better."