Now you know for whom she is sadly seeking when she pushes back the bed-curtains and bends down over each baby’s pillow.  Sometimes, when the old grandmother sits nodding by the fire, and the bigger children sleep in their beds, old Babouscka comes hobbling into the room, and whispers softly, “Is the young Child here?”

Ah, no; she has come too late, too late.  But the little children know her and love her.  Two thousand years ago she lost the chance of finding Him.  Crooked, wrinkled, old, sick and sorry, she yet lives on, looking into each baby’s face—­always disappointed, always seeking.  Will she find Him at last?

THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT

SELMA LAGERLOeF

Far away, in a desert in the East, there grew, many years ago, a palm that was very, very old, and very, very tall.  No one passing through the desert could help stopping to look at it, for it was much higher than other palms, and people said of it that it would surely grow to be higher than the Obelisks and Pyramids.

This great palm, standing in its loneliness, and looking over the desert, one day saw something which caused its huge crown of leaves to wave to and fro with surprise on its slender stem.  On the outskirts of the desert two lonely persons were wandering.  They were still so far away that even a camel would have looked no larger than an ant at that distance, but they were assuredly human beings, two who were strangers to the desert—­for the palm knew the people of the desert—­a man and a woman, who had neither guide, nor beasts of burden, nor tent, nor water-bag.

“Verily,” said the palm to itself, “these two have come hither to die.”

The palm looked quickly around.

“I am surprised,” it said, “that the lions have not already gone out to seize their prey.  But I do not see a single one about.  Nor do I see any of the robbers of the desert.  But they are sure to come.

“There awaits them a sevenfold death,” thought the palm.  “The lions will devour them, the serpents will sting them, thirst will consume them, the sand-storm will bury them, the robbers will kill them, the burning sun will overcome them, fear will destroy them.”

The palm tried to think of something else; the fate of these two made it sad.  But in the immeasurable desert around it there was not a single thing that the palm had not known and gazed at for thousands of years.  Nothing could attract its attention.  It was again obliged to think of the two wanderers.

“By the drought and the wind!” said the palm, invoking the two greatest enemies of life, “what is the woman carrying on her arm?  I believe these mad people have a little child with them!”

The palm, which was long-sighted, as the aged generally are, saw aright.  The woman carried in her arms a child, that had laid its head on her breast and was sleeping.

“The child has not even enough clothes on,” said the palm.  “I see that the mother has lifted up her skirt and thrown it over it.  She has taken it out of its bed in great haste and hurried away with it.  Now I understand:  these people are fugitives.