"yet I may feast my eyes upon them."

"Go away from here!" said a harsh voice. "How can the rich people see
all my fine things if you stand before the window? Be off with you,
you miserable little beggar!"

It was the shopkeeper, and he gave Barbara a savage box on the ear
that sent her reeling into the deeper snowdrifts of the gutter.

Presently she came to a large house where there seemed to be much
mirth and festivity. The shutters were thrown open, and through the
windows Barbara could see a beautiful Christmas-tree in the centre of
a spacious room--a beautiful Christmas-tree ablaze with red and
green lights, and heavy with toys and stars and glass balls and other
beautiful things that children love. There was a merry throng around
the tree, and the children were smiling and gleeful, and all in that
house seemed content and happy. Barbara heard them singing, and their
song was about the prince who was to come on the morrow.

"This must be the house where the prince will stop," thought Barbara.
"How I would like to see his face and hear his voice!--yet what would
he care for _me_, a 'miserable little beggar'?"

So Barbara crept on through the storm, shivering and disconsolate, yet
thinking of the prince.

"Where are you going?" she asked of the wind as it overtook her.

"To the cathedral," laughed the wind. "The great people are flocking
there, and I will have a merry time amongst them, ha, ha, ha!"