evive the old custom
this year, and had rehearsed the children. I thought when I heard that
the house was to be occupied that I might have to give it up. But Peggy
and I plucked up our courage and asked King Richard, and he graciously
gave permission.

It was a heavenly night. Snow on the ground and all the stars out. The
children met in the schoolhouse and we started in a procession. They all
wore simple little costumes, just some bit of bright color draped to give
them a quaint picturesqueness. One of the boys led a cow, and there was
an old ewe. Then riding on a donkey, borrowed by Mr. David, came the
oldest Mary in our school. I chose her because I wanted her to understand
the sacred significance of her name, and our only little Joseph walked by
her side. The children followed and their parents, with the wise men
quite in the rear, so that they might enter after the others.

When we reached the stable, I grouped Joseph and Mary in one of the old
mangers, where the Babe lay, and he was a dear, real, baby brother of
Mary. I hid a light behind the straw, so that the place was illumined.
And then my little wise men came in; and the children, who with their
parents were seated on the hay back in the shadows, sang, "We Three
Kings" and other carols. The gifts which the Magi brought were the
children's own pennies which they are giving to the other little children
across the sea who are fatherless because of the war.

It was quite wonderful to hear their sweet little voices, and to see
their rapt faces and to know that, however sordid their lives might be,
here was Dream, founded on the Greatest Truth, which would lift them
above the sordidness.

Dr. Brooks and his mother and Mr. David were not far from me, and Dr.
Brooks leaned over and asked if he might speak to the children. I said I
should be glad, so he stood up and told them in such simple, fine fashion
that he wanted to be to them all that his grandfather had been to their
parents and grandparents. He wanted them to feel that his life and
service belonged to them. He wanted them to know how pleased he was with
the Twelfth Night spectacle, and that he wanted it to become an annual
custom.

Then in his mother's name, he asked them to come up to the house--all of
them--and we were shown into the Garden Room which opens out upon what
was once a terraced garden, and there was a great cake with candles, and
sandwiches, and coffee for the grown-ups and hot chocolate f