“I got out of bed again and dressed myself,” she explained.  “Nurse is in the kitchen, dancing with the young man from Penare, who can’t afford to marry her for ever so long, father says.  I saw them twirling, as I slipped out—­”

“You have done a wrong thing,” said I:  “you might catch your death.”

Her lip fell:—­she was but five.  “Dick, I only wanted to see if ’twas true.”

“What?” I asked, covering her shoulders with the empty sack that had been my pillow.

“Why, that the cows pray on Christmas-eve.  Nurse says that at twelve o’clock to-night all the cows in their stalls will be on their knees, if only somebody is there to see.  So, as it’s near twelve by the tall clock indoors, I’ve come to see,” she wound up.

“It’s quig-nogs, I expect.  I never heard of it.”

“Nurse says they kneel and make a cruel moan, like any Christian folk.  It’s because Christ was born in a stable, and so the cows know all about it.  Listen to Dinah!  Dick, she’s going to begin!”

But Dinah, having heaved her moan, merely shuddered and was still again.

“Just fancy, Dick,” the little one went on, “it happened in a chall like ours!” She was quiet for a moment, her eyes fixed on the glossy rumps of the cows.  Then, turning quickly—­“I know about it, and I’ll show you.  Dick, you must be Saint Joseph, and I’ll be the Virgin Mary.  Wait a bit—­”

Her quick fingers began to undress the sailor-doll and fold his clothes carefully.  “I meant to christen him Robinson Crusoe,” she explained, as she laid the small garments, one by one, on the straw; “but he can’t be Robinson Crusoe till I’ve dressed him up again.”  The doll was stark naked now, with waxen face and shoulders, and bulging bags of sawdust for body and legs.

“Dick,” she said, folding the doll in her arms and kissing it—­ “St. Joseph, I mean—­the first thing we’ve got to do is to let people know he’s born.  Sing that carol I heard you trying over last week—­ the one that says ‘Far and far I carry it.’”

So I sang, while she rocked the babe:—­

      ’Naked boy, brown boy,
        In the snow deep,
       Piping, carolling
        Folks out of sleep;
       Little shoes, thin shoes,
        Shoes so wet and worn’—­
      ’But I bring the merry news
        —­Christ is born!

       Rise, pretty mistress,
        In your smock of silk;
       Give me for my good news
        Bread and new milk. 
       Joy, joy in Jewry,
        This very morn! 
       Far and far I carry it
        —­Christ is born!’

She heard me with a grave face to the end; then pulling a handful of straw, spread it in the empty manger and laid the doll there.  No, I forget; one moment she held it close to her breast and looked down on it.  The God who fashions children can tell where she learnt that look, and why I remembered it ten years later, when they let me look into the room where she lay with another babe in her clay-cold arms.