ittle girl who would do what she ought
not to do, the records of the class were read by the Domine, and the
prize awarded to Polly.

Willie Tamsen and Jamie Ruleson's classes were treated in a similar
way, and were equally successful in their recitations and equally
delighted with their gifts. Now, the real joy in giving gifts is found
in giving them to children, for the child heart beats long after we
think it has outgrown itself. The perfect charm of this gathering lay
in the fact that men and women became for a few hours little children
again. It was really a wonderful thing to see the half-grown girls,
the married women, and even old Judith Macpherson, crowding round
Polly to admire the waxen beauty and the long fair curls of her prize
doll.

After the school exercises the adults slowly scattered, sauntering
home with their wives, and carrying their babies as proudly as Polly
carried her new treasure. Truly both men and women receive the
kingdom of God and Love, when they become as little children. The
children remained for two hours longer in the school room. For the
entertainment of their parents the youngest ones had danced some of
those new dances just at that period introduced into Scotland,
called polkas and mazurkas, and now, to please themselves, they
began a series of those mythic games which children played in the
world's infancy, and which, thank God, have not yet perished from
off the face of the earth. "How many miles to Babylon?" "Hide and
seek," "In and out," "Blind man's buff," and so forth, and in this
part of the entertainment, everything and everyone depended upon
Christine. Mothers, going home, called to her, "Christine, look
after my bairn," and then went contentedly away.

They might contentedly do so, for whoever saw Christine Ruleson that
afternoon, in the midst of those forty or fifty children, saw
something as near to a vision of angels, as they were likely to see on
this earth. She stood among them like some divine mother. A little one
three years old was on her right arm. It pulled her earrings, and
rumpled her hair, and crushed her lace collar, and she only kissed and
held it closer. A little lad with a crooked spine, and the seraphic
face which generally distinguishes such sufferers, held her tightly by
her right hand. Others clung to her dress, and called her name in
every key of love and trust. She directed their games, and settled
their disputes, and if anything went wrong, put i