pel, and found they were from a
little illuminated model of the Nativity with the Virgin and Child in
the stable among the straw. A group of untidy children were looking at
it with bright beady eyes and chattering under their breath, while a
black-robed janitor was rattling his keys to make them behave.

This brought back the memory of Rome and of Sister Angela. But it also
made me think of Martin, and remember his speech at the public dinner,
about saying the prayers for the day with his comrades, that they might
feel that they were not cut off from the company of Christian men.

So telling myself he must be back by this time on that lonely plateau
that guards the Pole, I resolved (without thinking of the difference of
time) to go to mass on Christmas morning, in order to be doing the same
thing as Martin at the same moment.

With this in my mind I returned to our boarding-house and found
Christmas there too, for on looking into the drawing-room on my way
upstairs I saw the old actress, standing on a chair, hanging holly which
the old colonel with old-fashioned courtesy was handing up to her.

They were cackling away like two old hens when they caught sight of me,
whereupon the old actress cried:

"Ah, here's Beauty!"

Then she asked me if I would like a ticket for a dress rehearsal on
Christmas Eve of a Christmas pantomime.

"The audience will be chiefly children out of the lanes and alleys round
about, but perhaps you won't mind that," she said.

I told her I should be overjoyed, and at two o'clock the following
afternoon I was in my seat at the corner of the dress-circle of the
great theatre, from which I could see both the stage and the auditorium.

The vast place was packed with children from ceiling to floor, and I
could see the invisible hands of thousands of mothers who had put the
girls into clean pinafores and brushed and oiled the tousled heads of
the boys.

How their eager faces glistened! How sad they looked when the wicked
sisters left Cinderella alone in the kitchen! How bright when the
glittering fairy godmother came to visit her! How their little dangling
feet clapped together with joy when the pretty maid went off to the ball
behind six little ponies which pranced along under the magical moonlight
in the falling snow!

But the part of the performance which they liked best was their own part
when, in the interval, the band struck up one of the songs they sang in
their lanes and alleys: