llow. And then,--as Julia was saying she would stay, and how
they could try again, and could do this and that,--then the door-bell
rang again, and Mrs. Coleman had herself come round with a little white
pitcher, and herself ran up stairs with it, and herself knocked at the
door!

The blockade was broken, and

THE MILK HAD COME!

* * * * *

Mary never knew that it was from Huldah Stevens's milk-can that her boy
drank in the first drop of his new life. Nor did Huldah know it. Nor
did John know it, nor the paladins who fought that day at his side. Nor
did Silas Lovejoy know it.

But the good God and all good angels knew it. Why ask for more?

And you and I, dear reader, if we can forget that always our daily bread
comes to us, because a thousand brave men and a thousand brave women are
at work in the world, praying to God and trying to serve him, we will
not forget it as we meet at breakfast on this blessed Christmas day!

STAND AND WAIT.

I.

CHRISTMAS EVE.

"They've come! they've come!"

This was the cry of little Herbert as he ran in from the square stone
which made the large doorstep of the house. Here he had been watching, a
self-posted sentinel, for the moment when the carriage should turn the
corner at the bottom of the hill.

"They've come! they've come!" echoed joyfully through the house; and the
cry penetrated out into the extension, or ell, in which the grown
members of the family were, in the kitchen, "getting tea" by some
formulas more solemn than ordinary.

"Have they come?" cried Grace; and she set her skillet back to the
quarter-deck, or after-part of the stove, lest its white contents
should burn while she was away. She threw a waiting handkerchief over
her shoulders, and ran with the others to the front door, to wave
something white, and to be in at the first welcome.

Young and old were gathered there in that hospitable open space where
the side road swept up to the barn on its way from the main road. The
bigger boys of the home party had scattered half-way down the hill by
this time. Even grandmamma had stepped down from the stone, and walked
half-way to the roadway. Every one was waving something. Those who had
no handkerchiefs had hats or towels to wave; and the more advanced boys
began an undefined or irregular cheer.

But the carryall advanced slowly up the hill, with no answering
handkerchief, and no bonneted head stretched out from the sid