In the big hall he had helped the others put up the fragrant spruce pine-tree which reached to the ceiling, helped to dress it midst jolly chatter and joyous confusion, helped to hide the innumerable presents for the morrow’s findings; and on Christmas morning had as eagerly dumped the contents of his stocking as had Jack and Janet, or the men who had come from busy city lives to be boys again, or as Claudia herself, who could not see with what her own was filled, for the constant demand that she should come here and there, and see this and that, or do what no one else was able to.

Slipping down farther in his chair, Laine put his feet on the fender and with half-shut eyes saw other pictures in the fire.  The gray dawn of Christmas morning came again, and he seemed to hear the clear, childish voice below his window.  Half asleep, he had stirred and wondered what it was, then sat up to listen.  The quaint words of the old carols he knew well, but never had he heard them sung as Gabriel was singing them.  Shrill and sweet in the crisp, cold air, the voice sounded first as if far away and then very near, and he knew the boy was walking up and down below each window that all might hear alike.

  As Joseph was a-walking
    He heard the angels sing,
  This night there shall be born
    Our heavenly King.

Here and there, in a verse from one carol joined almost in the same breath to another he went from: 

  God rest you, merry gentlemen,
    Let nothing you dismay. 
  Remember Christ, our Saviour,
    Was born on Christmas Day.

to

  We are not daily beggars,
    That beg from door to door,
  But we are neighbor’s children
    Whom you have seen before.

He had smiled at the mixture of verses and jumped up, for Jim had come in to light the fire, and from his broadly grinning face “Christmas Gif” was radiating, if from his lips, in obedience to orders, their utterance was withheld.  On his door a half-hour later came the pounding of childish fists, and Janet’s lisping voice was calling sturdily: 

“Oh, Mither Laine, Santa Clauth hath come and your stocking ith down-stairs.  Pleath, thir, hurry!  Mother said I could kiss you a happy Chrithmath if you were drethed.”

Hand in hand they had gone into the dining-room, with its lavishly spread table and mantel-hung stockings, and the chorus of hearty greetings and warm hand-shaking had made his heart beat like a boy’s.

The day had passed quickly.  The gay breakfast; the unwrapping of bundles; the sleigh-ride to church, where the service was not so long as was the seemingly social meeting afterward; the bountiful dinner with its table laden as in days of old rather than in the modern fashion of elegant emptiness; the short afternoon—­it was all soon over, and the evening had gone even more rapidly.