Gradually the day failed.  The late afternoon faded into evening.  Gray twilight stole swiftly down.  For a while the white fields of snow outside reflected a vague dimness; then night came with a noiseless rush, closing up the entrance to the cave with a wall of blackness.

Perched on the Woman’s shoulder the robin dozed.  She still went on singing.  How long he had been dozing he had no means of telling.  He was wakened by a multitudinous rustling, as of a crowd assembling and drawing nearer.  At first he thought that it was some of the more persistent of the animals, coming once more to urge the Woman to tell them how babies happened.  Then, of a sudden, he knew that he had been mistaken.  The gloom of the cave was lit up by a glowing brightness.  Peering across the threshold, with all the haloed hosts of Heaven tiptoeing behind her, was the Virgin Mary.  It was the crowd of haloes that was causing so much brightness.

Stepping to the Woman’s side, she gazed down longingly at the small God-Man.

“I want one.  Oh, I want one so badly,” she murmured.

The angels, thronging behind her, folded their wings and repeated her words, “So badly!  So badly!” The sound was like a prayer, dying out in the void which spreads between earth and Heaven.

“Let me hold him,” she begged.

Because she was the Virgin, even though it might wake him, the Woman did not dare to refuse her.  But she asserted her authority, as all mothers must, by pretending that she was the only person who knew how to hold him properly.  And perhaps she was the only one at that moment, for there was no other mother besides herself in earth or Heaven.  She showed the Virgin how to support his little head because it was wobbly; and how to keep one arm beneath his back because it was weak; and how he liked to be cuddled against her breast because it was warm and cushiony.  And then, becoming generous, she taught her the silly little lullaby.

“I shall never go back to Heaven,” the Virgin whispered.  “I shall stay here always and help you nurse him.”

“Never go back to Heaven,” the angels echoed; “stay here always.”

The Woman’s eyes became troubled.  “But I want him to myself,” she faltered.  “I don’t want helping.”  Then she ceased to frown, for she had discovered a stronger argument.  “Besides, what about God?  You wouldn’t leave Him all by Himself in Heaven.  He’d be lonely.”

The Virgin nodded her head vigorously.  “I would, for I also am a woman.  There are no babies in Heaven.  I couldn’t be happy without a baby.”

Behind her the angels nodded their haloes.  “No babies in Heaven.  Couldn’t be happy without a baby.”

It must have been so much talking that disturbed him; the baby woke up.  As he opened his eyes and saw the Queen of Heaven bending over him, he smiled.  It was his first smile.  On the instant the Woman, like all mothers, became jealous and snatched him back into her own possession.  She liked to believe that no one, not even the Man, could make him as comfortable as she could.  Piling her golden hair upon her knees to make a pillow for him, she laid him naked on his back and commenced playing with his toes.  If he had not given her his first smile, she would at least make certain of his second.