“Angel!” she heard him croak with maudlin accent.  “Pink Angel, begorrah!  What doin’ ’ere, eh?  Whoop!  Go back to sky, Angel!” and lifting a brutal foot he kicked the image into the street.  Then with a shriek of laughter he staggered away out of sight.

Miss Terry found herself trembling with indignation.  The idea!  He had kicked the Christmas Angel,—­the very Angel that Tom had hung on their tree!  It was sacrilege, or at least—­Fiddlestick!  Miss Terry’s mind was growing confused.  She had a sudden impulse to rescue the toy from being trampled into filthiness.  The fire was better than that.

She hurried down the steps into the street, forgetting her shawl.  She sought in the snow and snatched the pink morsel to safety.  Straight to the fire she carried it, and once more held it to the flames.  But again she found it impossible to burn the thing.  Once, twice, she tried.  But each time something seemed to clutch back her wrist.  At last she shrugged impatiently and laid the Angel on the mantelpiece beside the square old marble clock, which marked the hour of half-past eight.

“Well, I won’t burn it to-night,” she reflected.  “Somehow, I can’t do it just now.  I don’t see what has got into me!  But to-morrow I will.  Yes, to-morrow I will.”

She sat down in the armchair and fumbled in the old play box for the remaining scraps.  There were but a few meaningless bits of ribbon and gauze, with the end of a Christmas candle, the survivor of some past festival, burned on some tree in the past.  All these but the last she tossed into the fire, where they made a final protesting blaze.  The candle-end fell to the floor unnoticed.

“There!  That is the last of the stuff,” she exclaimed with grim satisfaction, shaking the dust from her black silk skirt.  “It is all gone now, thank Heaven, and I can go to bed in peace.  No, I forgot Norah.  I suppose I must sit up and wait for her.  Bother the girl!  She ought to be in by now.  What can she find to amuse her all this time?  Christmas Eve!  Fiddlestick!  But I have got rid of a lot of rubbish to-night, and that is worth something.”

She sank back in her chair and clasped her hands over her breast with a sigh.  She felt strangely weary.  Her eyes sought the clock once more, and doing so rested upon the Christmas Angel lying beside it.  She frowned and closed her eyes to shut out the sight with its haunting memories and suggestions——­

CHAPTER VII

BEFORE THE FIRE

Suddenly there was a volume of sound outside, and a great brightness filled the room.  Miss Terry opened her eyes.  The fire was burning red; but a yellow light, as from thousands of candles, shone in at the window, and there was the sound of singing,—­the sweetest singing that Miss Terry had ever heard.

    “An Angel of the Lord came down,
        And glory shone around.”