Chapter 7

"She's been somebody's pet," said the old woman, placing her on the floor. "She ain't always been like this."

The divine emotion of pity, so new to this forlorn creature, grew and swelled in her bosom. The man at the hall had _not_ lied, after all. Here was another of God's creatures as miserable as herself--nay, more so, for she had a roof to shelter her! And she could share it with this homeless one.

"Poor puss!" muttered old Marg, stroking the rough fur. "You're starvin', too, ain't ye? an' I ain't got nothin' to give ye, not a bite or a sup. Ah!"

Her eyes had fallen upon the discarded food. Eagerly she seized it and placed it before the cat; the starving creature gnawed greedily at the bone an instant, then looked up with a hopeless mew.

The old woman felt a keener pang of pity.

"Poor beast!" she said, with a bitter smile. "Ye can't eat 'em, can ye? No more could I! We're in the same box, puss! Old, an' toothless, an' nobody belongin' to us. We'll have to starve together, I guess. An' it's Christmas day! Did ye know that, puss? Christmas day! Lord! Lord!"

The cat rubbed against her skirts, her eyes fixed upon her benefactor's. "Seems to understand every word I say!" old Marg muttered. "If only I had a drop o' milk for her now!"

Hobbling to the stove, she examined the battered tin can, letting the moonlight shine into its rusty depths. A little water or tea remained in it, and with this she moistened some of the bread and placed it before the cat, which devoured it now eagerly. Then she took the animal in her arms and laid herself down on the mattress, drawing the ragged covers over them. The cat nestled against her side; the warmth of the two poor bodies mingled, and both slept.

The moon-ray crept along and spread itself over the heap of rags, the knotted fingers resting on the cat's rough fur, the seamed old face; it passed away, and morning dawned, with a peal of bells and the sound of footsteps on the pavement below, and still the two slept on.

Angela stood near the door, receiving her Christmas guests. They came straggling in, in twos and threes, some boldly and impudently, some shame-faced and shy, some eager, some indifferent, but all poverty-pinched. Each one was pleasantly welcomed, and passed on to the feast. Angela watched and waited, and at last the door opened slowly to admit old Marg, who stopped short on the threshold, with a look at once stubborn, appealing, suspicious, ashamed. Like a wild animal on the alert for the faintest sign of repulsion or danger, she stood there, but Angela only smiled, proffering her white, soft hand, destitute of jewels, but the hand of a lady.

"A Merry Christmas!" she said brightly.

"I was ugly to ye last night," said old Marg huskily, ignoring the beautiful hand she dared not touch.

"Never mind!" Angela answered sweetly. "You were tired."

"I am a bad old woman!" said old Marg, mistrustfully.

"Never mind that, either!" said Angela. "Let me be your friend. If you will, you shall never be cold or hungry again."

A profound wonder came into the old face--then it began to writhe, and from each eye oozed scant tears, seeking a channel amid the seams and wrinkles of the sunken cheeks.

"You will let me be your friend," urged Angela.

Still old Marg wept silently, the scant tears of age.

"You shall have a pleasant home and----"

A swift, suspicious glance darted from the wet eyes.

"Not a 'sylum, miss, please!" said the old woman.

"No," said Angela quietly. "Not an asylum, A home--a bright, clean, comfortable home----"

"I can work, miss!" put in old Marg, doubling her knotted hands to show their strength. "I can wash, an' scrub----"

"Yes," said Angela, "you may work all you are able, helping to keep things clean and comfortable."

Still old Marg looked doubtful. Wiping her cheeks with a corner of the shawl, she half turned toward the door.

"Have you a family, or any one belonging to you?" asked Angela, thinking to have reached the root of the difficulty.

"Yes," said the old woman stoutly. "I have a cat. Where I go, she must go, too!"

Angela patted the grimy hand, with a laugh which was good to hear.

"I understand you perfectly," she said. "I have a cat of my own. You and _your_ cat shall not be separated."

A half-hour later entered the young man Robert. Angela pointed silently to old Marg, sitting in a warm corner, contentedly munching her Christmas dinner. "What have you done to her?" he asked. "She looks more human already."

Angela laughed again, that same laugh which goes to one's heart so. "I have adopted her--and her cat!" she answered. "That's all!"

THE FIRST PURITAN CHRISTMAS TREE.

(ANONYMOUS.)

Mrs. Olcott called her boys, and bade them go to the pine woods and get the finest, handsomest young hemlock tree that they could find.

"Get one that is straight and tall, with well-boughed branches on it, and put it where you can draw it under the wood-shed after dark," she added.

The boys went to Pine Hill, and there they picked out the finest young tree on all the hill, and said, "We will take this one." So, with their hatchets they hewed it down and brought it safely home the next night when all was dark. And when Roger was quietly sleeping in the adjoining room, they dragged the tree into the kitchen. It was too tall, so they took it out again and cut it off two or three feet at the base. Then they propped it up, and the curtains being down over the windows, and blankets being fastened over the curtains to prevent any one looking in, and the door being doubly barred to prevent any one coming in, they all went to bed.

Very early the next morning, while the stars shone on the snow-covered hills--the same stars that shone sixteen hundred years before on the hills when Christ was born in Bethlehem--the little Puritan mother in New England arose very softly. She went out and lit the kitchen fire anew from the ash-covered embers. She fastened upon the twigs of the tree the gifts she had bought in Boston for her boys and girl. Then she took as many as twenty pieces of candle and fixed them upon the branches. After that she softly called Rupert, Robert and Lucy, and told them to get up and come into the kitchen.

Hurrying back, she began, with a bit of a burning stick, to light the candles. Just as the last one was set aflame, in trooped the three children.

Before they had time to say a word, they were silenced by their mother's warning.

"I wish to fetch Roger in and wake him up before it," she said. "Keep still until I come back!"

The little lad, fast asleep, was lifted in a blanket and gently carried by his mother into the beautiful presence.

"See! Roger, my boy, see!" she said, arousing him. "It is Christmas morning now! In England they only have Christmas-boughs, but here in New England we have a whole Christmas-tree."

"O mother!" he cried. "O Lucy! Is it really, really true, and no dream at all? Yes, I see! I see! O mother, it is so beautiful! Were all the trees on all the hills lighted up that way when Christ was born? And, mother," he added, clapping his little hands with joy at the thought, "why, yes, the stars did sing when Christ was born! They must be glad, then, and keep Christmas, too, in heaven. I know they must, and there will be good times there."

"Yes," said his mother; "there will be good times there, Roger."

"Then," said the boy, "I sha'n't mind going, now that I've seen the Christmas-bough. I--What is that, mother?"

What was it that they heard? The little Olcott home had never before seemed to tremble so. There were taps at the window, there were knocks at the door--and it was as yet scarcely the break of day! There were voices also, shouting something to somebody.

"Shall I put out the candles, mother?" whispered Robert.

"What will they do to us for having the tree? I wish we hadn't it," regretted Rupert; while Lucy clung to her mother's gown and shrieked with all her strength, "It's Indians!"

Pale and white and still, ready to meet her fate, stood Mrs. Olcott, until, out of the knocking and the tapping at her door, her heart caught a sound. It was a voice calling, "Rachel! Rachel! Rachel!"

"Unbar the door!" she cried back to her boys; "it's your father calling!" Down came the blankets; up went the curtain; open flew the door, and in walked Captain Olcott, followed by every man and woman in Plymouth who had heard at break of day the glorious news that the expected ship had arrived at Boston, and with it the long lost Captain Olcott. For an instant nothing was thought of except the joyous welcoming of the Captain in his new home.

"What's this? What is it? What does this mean?" was asked again and again, when the first excitement was passed, as the tall young pine stood aloft, its candles ablaze, its gifts still hanging.

"It's welcome home to father!" said Lucy, her only thought to screen her mother.

"No, child, no!" sternly spoke Mrs. Olcott. "Tell the truth!"

"It's--a--Christmas-tree!" faltered poor Lucy.

One and another and another, Pilgrims and Puritans all, drew near with faces stern and forbidding, and gazed and gazed, until one and another and yet another softened slowly into a smile as little Roger's piping voice sung out:

"She made it for me, mother did. But you may have it now, and all the pretty things that are on it, too, because you've brought my father back again; if mother will let you," he added.

Neither Pilgrim nor Puritan frowned at the gift. One man, the sternest there, broke off a little twig and said:

"I'll take it for the sake of the good old times at home."

THE FIRST CHRISTMAS IN NEW ENGLAND.

BY HEZEKIAH BUTTERWORTH.

They thought they had come to their port that day, But not yet was their journey done; And they drifted away from Provincetown Bay In the fireless light of the sun. With rain and sleet were the tall masts iced, And gloomy and chill was the air, But they looked from the crystal sails to Christ, And they came to a harbor fair. The white hills silent lay,-- For there were no ancient bells to ring, No priests to chant, no choirs to sing, No chapel of baron, or lord, or king, That gray, cold winter day.

The snow came down on the vacant seas, And white on the lone rocks lay,-- But rang the axe 'mong the evergreen trees And followed the Sabbath day. Then rose the sun in a crimson haze, And the workmen said at dawn: "Shall our axes swing on this day of days, When the Lord of Life was born?" The white hills silent lay,-- For there were no ancient bells to ring, No priests to chant, no choirs to sing, No chapel of baron, or lord, or king, That gray, cold Christmas Day.

"The old town's bells we seem to hear: They are ringing sweet on the Dee; They are ringing sweet on the Harlem Meer, And sweet on the Zuyder Zee. The pines are frosted with snow and sleet. Shall we our axes wield When the chimes at Lincoln are ringing sweet And the bells of Austerfield?" The air was cold and gray,-- And there were no ancient bells to ring, No priests to chant, no choirs to sing, No chapel of baron, or lord, or king, That gray, cold Christmas Day.

Then the master said, "Your axes wield, Remember ye Malabarre Bay; And the covenant there with the Lord ye sealed; Let your axes ring to-day. You may talk of the old town's bells to-night, When your work for the Lord is done, And your boats return, and the shallop's light Shall follow the light of the sun. The sky is cold and gray,-- And here are no ancient bells to ring, No priests to chant, no choirs to sing, No chapel of baron, or lord, or king. This gray, cold Christmas Day.

"If Christ was born on Christmas Day, And the day by Him is blest, Then low at His feet the evergreens lay And cradle His church in the West. Immanuel waits at the temple gates Of the nation to-day ye found, And the Lord delights in no formal rites; To-day let your axes sound!" The sky was cold and gray,-- And there were no ancient bells to ring, No priests to chant, no choirs to sing, No chapel of baron, or lord, or king, That gray, cold Christmas Day.

Their axes rang through the evergreen trees Like the bells on the Thames and Tay; And they cheerily sang by the windy seas, And they thought of Malabarre Bay. On the lonely heights of Burial Hill The old Precisioners sleep; But did ever men with a nobler will A holier Christmas keep, When the sky was cold and gray,-- And there were no ancient bells to ring, No priests to chant, no choirs to sing, No chapel of baron, or lord, or king, That gray, cold Christmas Day?

THE CHIMES.

BY CHARLES DICKENS.

FIRST QUARTER.

There are not many people--and as it is desirable that a story-teller and a story-reader should establish a mutual understanding as soon as possible, I beg it to be noticed that I confine this observation neither to young people nor to little people, but extend it to all conditions of people: little and big, young and old: yet growing up, or already growing down again--there are not, I say, many people who would care to sleep in a church. I don't mean at sermon time in warm weather (when the thing has actually been done, once or twice), but in the night, and alone. A great multitude of persons will be violently astonished, I know, by this position, in the broad bold Day. But it applies to Night. It must be argued by night. And I will undertake to maintain it successfully on any gusty winter's night appointed for the purpose, with any one opponent chosen from the rest, who will meet me singly in an old churchyard, before an old church door; and will previously empower me to lock him in, if needful to his satisfaction, until morning.

For the night-wind has a dismal trick of wandering round and round a building of that sort, and moaning as it goes; and of trying with its unseen hand, the windows and the doors; and seeking out some crevices by which to enter. And when it has got in; as one not finding what it seeks, whatever that may be, it wails and howls to issue forth again; and not content with stalking through the aisles, and gliding round and round the pillars, and tempting the deep organ, soars up to the roof, and strives to rend the rafters; then flings itself despairingly upon the stones below, and passes, muttering, into the vaults. Ugh! Heaven preserve us, sitting snugly round the fire! It has an awful voice, that wind at midnight, singing in a church!

But, high up in the steeple! There the foul blast roars and whistles! High up in the steeple, where it is free to come and go through many an airy arch and loophole, and to twist and twine itself about the giddy stair, and twirl the groaning weathercock, and make the very tower shake and shiver!

High up in the steeple of an old church, far above the light and murmur of the town and far below the flying clouds that shadow it, is the wild and dreary place at night: and high up in the steeple of an old church, dwelt the Chimes I tell of.

They were old Chimes, trust me. Centuries ago, these Bells had been baptized by bishops: so many centuries ago, that the register of their baptism was lost long, long before the memory of man, and no one knew their names. They had had their Godfathers and Godmothers, these Bells (for my part, by the way, I would rather incur the responsibility of being Godfather to a Bell than a Boy), and had had their silver mugs, no doubt, besides. But Time had mowed down their sponsors, and Henry the Eighth had melted down their mugs; and they now hung, nameless and mugless, in the church tower.

Not speechless, though. Far from it. They had clear, loud, lusty, sounding voices, had these Bells; and far and wide they might be heard upon the wind. Much too sturdy Chimes were they, to be dependent on the pleasure of the wind, moreover; for, fighting gallantly against it when it took an adverse whim, they would pour their cheerful notes into a listening ear right royally; and bent on being heard, on stormy nights, by some poor mother watching a sick child, or some lone wife whose husband was at sea, they had been sometimes known to beat a blustering Nor'Wester; ay, "all to fits," as Toby Veck said;--for though they chose to call him Trotty Veck, his name was Toby, and nobody could make it anything else either (except Tobias); he having been as lawfully christened in his day as the bells had been in theirs, though with not quite so much of solemnity or public rejoicing.

For my part, I confess myself of Toby Veck's belief, for I am sure he had opportunities enough of forming a correct one. And whatever Toby Veck said, I say. And I take my stand by Toby Veck, although he _did_ stand all day long (and weary work it was) just outside the church-door. In fact he was a ticket-porter, Toby Veck, and waited there for jobs.

And a breezy, goose-skinned, blue-nosed, red-eyed, stony-toed, tooth-chattering place it was to wait in, in the winter-time, as Toby Veck well knew. The wind came tearing round the corner--especially the east wind--as if it had sallied forth, express, from the confines of the earth, to have a blow at Toby. And oftentimes it seemed to come upon him sooner than it had expected, for bouncing round the corner, and passing Toby, it would suddenly wheel round again, as if it cried "Why, here he is!"

Toby was curious about the Bells because there were points of resemblance between them and him. They hung there in all weathers, with the wind and rain driving in upon them; facing only the outsides of all the houses; never getting any nearer to the blazing fires that gleamed and shone upon the windows or came puffing out of the chimney tops; and incapable of participating in any of the good things that were constantly being handed through the street doors and iron railings to prodigious cooks. Being but a simple man, he invested the Bells with a strange and solemn character. They were so mysterious, often heard and never seen; so high up, so far off, so full of such a deep, strong melody, that he regarded them with a species of awe; and sometimes when he looked up at the dark arched windows in the tower, he half expected to be beckoned to by something which was not a Bell, and yet was what he heard so often sounding in the Chimes. For all this Toby scouted with indignation a certain flying rumor that the Chimes were haunted, as implying the possibility of their being connected with any Evil thing. In short, they were very often in his ears, and very often in his thoughts, but always in his good opinion; and he very often got such a crick in his neck by staring with his mouth wide open, at the steeple where they hung, that he was fain to take an extra trot or two, afterward, to cure it.

The very thing he was in the act of doing one cold day, when the last drowsy sound of Twelve o'clock, just struck, was humming like a melodious monster of a Bee, and not by any means a busy Bee, all through the steeple?

"Dinner time, eh!" said Toby, trotting up and down before the church. "Ah!"

Toby's nose was very red, and his eyelids were very red, and he winked very much, and his shoulders were very near his ears, and his legs were very stiff, and altogether he was evidently a long way upon the frosty side of cool.

"Dinner time, eh!" repeated Toby, using his right hand muffler like an infantine boxing-glove, and punishing his chest for being cold. "Ah-h-h-h!"

He took a silent trot, after that, for a minute or two.

"There's nothing," said Toby, "more regular in its coming round than dinner time, and nothing less regular in its coming round than dinner. That's the great difference between 'em. It's took me a long time to find it out. I wonder whether it would be worth any gentleman's while, now, to buy that obserwation for the Papers; or the Parliament!"

Tony was only joking, for he gravely shook his head in self-depreciation.

"Why! Lord!" said Toby. "The Papers is full of obserwations as it is; and so's the Parliament. Here's last week's paper, now;" taking a very dirty one from his pocket, and holding it from him at arm's length; "full of obserwations! Full of obserwations! I like to know the news as well as any man," said Toby, slowly; folding it a little smaller, and putting it in his pocket again: "but it almost goes against the grain with me to read a paper now. It frightens me almost. I don't know what we poor people are coming to. Lord send we may be coming to something better in the New Year nigh upon us!"

"Why, father, father!" said a pleasant voice, hard by.

But Toby, not hearing it continued to trot backward and forward: musing as he went, and talking to himself.

"It seems as if we can't go right, or do right, or be righted," said Toby. "I hadn't much schooling, myself, when I was young; and I can't make out whether we have any business on the face of the earth, or not. Sometimes I think we must have--a little; and sometimes I think we must be intruding. I get so puzzled sometimes that I am not even able to make up my mind whether there is any good at all in us, or whether we are born bad. We seem to do dreadful things; we seem to give a deal of trouble; we are always being complained of and guarded against. One way or another, we fill the papers. Talk of a New Year!" said Toby, mournfully. "I can bear up as well as another man at most times; better than a good many, for I am as strong as a lion, and all men an't; but supposing it should really be that we have no right to a New Year--supposing we really _are_ intruding----"

"Why, father, father!" said the pleasant voice again.

Toby heard it this time; started; stopped; and shortening his sight, which had been directed a long way off as seeking for enlightenment in the very heart of the approaching year, found himself face to face with his own child, and looking close into her eyes.

Bright eyes they were. Eyes that would bear a world of looking in, before their depth was fathomed. Dark eyes, that reflected back the eyes which searched them; not flashingly or at the owner's will, but with a clear, calm, honest, patient radiance, claiming kindred with that light which Heaven called into being. Eyes that were beautiful and true, and beaming with Hope. With Hope so young and fresh; with Hope so buoyant, vigorous and bright, despite the twenty years of work and poverty on which they had looked; that they became a voice to Trotty Veck, and said: "I think we have some business here--a little!"

Trotty kissed the lips belonging to the eyes, and squeezed the blooming face between his hands.

"Why, Pet," said Trotty. "What's to-do? I didn't expect you, to-day, Meg."

"Neither did I expect to come, father," cried the girl, nodding her head and smiling as she spoke. "But here I am! And not alone; not alone!"

"Why you don't mean to say," observed Trotty, looking curiously at a covered basket which she carried in her hand, "that you----"

"Smell it, father dear," said Meg, "Only smell it!"

Trotty was going to lift up the cover at once, in a great hurry, when she gayly interposed her hand.

"No, no, no," said Meg, with the glee of a child. "Lengthen it out a little. Let me just lift up the corner; just the lit-tle ti-ny cor-ner, you know," said Meg, suiting the action to the word with the utmost gentleness, and speaking very softly, as if she were afraid of being overheard by something inside the basket; "there. Now. What's that!"