"I love little girls," said Tom, "especially little girls with yellow hair
and blue eyes, such as you used to have, Angelina."

"You will like Mary, then," said Miss Terry, with a pretty pink flush of
pleasure in her cheeks.

"I shall like her, _if_ she comes," amended Tom, who, man-like, received
with reservations the account of a vision vouchsafed not unto him.

"She will come," said Miss Terry with her old positiveness, glancing
towards the window where the Christmas Angel hung.

Then arose the sound of singing outside the house. The passing choristers
had spied the quaint window, now the only one in the street which remained
lighted:--

"When Christ was born of Mary free,
In Bethlehem, in that fair citye,
Angels sang with mirth and glee,
_In Excelsis Gloria!_"




CHAPTER XV

CHRISTMAS DAY