“He might have been,” said the stocking,—“indeed I rather think he was, for he stroked and patted me two or three times. Or he might have been listening the wind sing its Christmas song.”
“Can the wind sing?” said Carl.
“Ay—and sigh too. Most of all about the time of other people’s holidays. It’s a wild, sighing kind of a song at best—whistled and sung and sighed together,—sometimes round the house, and sometimes through a keyhole. I heard what it said that night well enough. You won’t understand it, but this was it:—
‘Christmas again! Christmas again!
With its holly berries so bright and red.
They gleam in the wood, they grow by the lane,—
O hath not Christmas a joyful tread?
Christmas again! Christmas again!
What does it find? and what does it bring?