gladness. The
instant the horses' bells stopped, their voices began. In an instant
more we saw Haliburton and Anna run to the window and pull up the
shades, and, in a minute more, faces at all the windows. And so the
children sung through Clement's old hymn. Little did Clement think of
bells and snow, as he taught it in his Sunday school there in
Alexandria. But perhaps to-day, as they pin up the laurels and the palm
in the chapel at Alexandria, they are humming the words, not thinking of
Clement more than he thought of us. As the children closed with

"Swell the triumphant song
To Christ, our King,"

Haliburton came running out, and begged me to bring them in. But I told
him, "No," as soon as I could hush their shouts of "Merry Christmas;"
that we had a long journey before us, and must not alight by the way.
And the children broke out with

"Hail to the night,
Hail to the day,"

rather a favorite,--quicker and more to the childish taste perhaps than
the other,--and with another "Merry Christmas" we were off again.

Off, the length of Commonwealth Avenue, to where it crosses the
Brookline branch of the Mill-Dam,--dashing along with the gayest of the
sleighing-parties as we came back into town, up Chestnut Street, through
Louisburg Square,--we ran the sleigh into a bank on the slope of
Pinckney Street in front of Walter's house,--and, before they suspected
there that any one had come, the children were singing

"Carol, carol, Christians,
Carol joyfully."

Kisses flung from the window; kisses flung back from the street. "Merry
Christmas" again with a good-will, and then one of the girls began

"When Anna took the baby,
And pressed his lips to hers"--

and all of them fell in so cheerily. O dear me! it is a scrap of old
Ephrem the Syrian, if they did but know it! And when, after this, Harry
would fain have driven on, because two carols at one house was the rule,
how the little witches begged that they might sing just one song more
there, because Mrs. Alexander had been so kind to them, when she showed
them about the German stitches. And then up the hill and over to the
North End, and as far as we could get the horses up into Moon Court,
that they might sing to the Italian image-man who gave Lucy the boy and
dog in plaster, when she was sick in the spring. For the children had,
you know, the choice of where they would go; and they select their best
friends, and will be more apt t