ttle lamb, and so they could not possibly be expected to know what
a great honor had suddenly befallen them. They did not dream that, the
night before, Pere Michaud had told Felix that his Beppo (for Beppo was
Felix's very own) had been chosen by the shepherds for the "offered lamb"
of the Christmas Eve procession in all its festival splendor in the great
church of the village.

Of the importance of this procession in the eyes of the peasant folk I
will tell you more by and by; it is enough to say now that to be the
offered lamb, or indeed the offered lamb's mother, for both always went
together, was the greatest honor and glory that could possibly happen to a
Provencal sheep, and so little Felix was fairly bursting with pride and
delight. And so it was, too, that he was now busying himself washing their
wool, which he determined should shine like spun silver on the great
night.

He tugged away, scrubbing and brushing and combing the thick fleeces, and
at last, after much labor, considered their toilets done for the day;
then, giving each a handful of fresh hay to nibble, he left the fold and
trudged into the cottage.

"Well, little one," said the Mise, "hast thou finished thy work?"

"Yes, mother," answered Felix; "and I shall scrub them so each day till
the holy night! Even now Ninette is white as milk, and Beppo shines like
an angel! Ah, but I shall be proud when he rides up to the altar in his
little cart! And, mother, dost thou not really think him far handsomer
than was Jean's lamb, that stupid Nano, in the procession last year?"

"There, there," said the Mise, "never thou mind about Jean's lamb, but run
along now and finish thy creche."

Now, in Provence, at the time when Felix lived, no one had ever heard of
such a thing as a Christmas tree; but in its stead every cottage had a
"creche"; that is, in one corner of the great living-room, the room of the
fireplace, the peasant children and their fathers and mothers built up on
a table a mimic village of Bethlehem, with houses and people and animals,
and, above all, with the manger, where the Christ Child lay. Everyone took
the greatest pains to make the creche as perfect as possible, and some
even went so far as to fasten tiny angels to the rafters, so that they
hovered over the toy houses like a flock of white butterflies; and
sometimes a gold star, hung on a golden thread, quivered over the little
manger, in memory of the wonderful star of the Magi.

In th