The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 | Page 7

the Christ Child. The girls realised as much and dealt gently with them, and in the outcome no one felt the poorer; for the welcome bestowed upon the surprise party was untinged by any shadow of embarrassment, and they sat around a festal board, happy to feel that their presence was hailed as the culminating joy of the day.
* * * * *
It was evening when the car again approached the lonely house, and Margaret, speaking down the connecting tube, directed the chauffeur to drive at his slowest speed for the next quarter of a mile.
Jack was lying back in his corner, absorbed in happy dreams. Never so long as he lived could he forget this Christmas Day, which had seen the fulfilment of his hopes in Myra's sweetness, Myra's troth. Tom was fast asleep, dreaming of "dorm." suppers, and other escapades of the last term. The two sisters were as much alone as if the only occupants of the car.
They craned forward, eager for the first glimpse of the house, and caught sight of a beam of light athwart the darkness of the night.
The house was all black save for one window, but that was as a lighthouse in a waste, for the curtains were undrawn, and fire and lamp sent out a rosy glow which seemed the embodiment of cheer.
Against the white background of the wall a group of figures could be seen standing together beneath the lamp; the strains of a harmonium floated sweetly on the night air, a chorus of glad young voices singing the well-known words:
"The King of Love my Shepherd is!"
With a common impulse the two girls waved their hands from the window as the car plunged forward.
"Good-night, little sisters!"
"Good-night, little brothers!"
[Sidenote: How He comes]
"Sleep well, little people. The Christ Child is with you. You asked Him, and He came----"
"And the wonderful thing," said Peg, "the most wonderful thing is, that He came through us!"
"But that," answered Margaret thoughtfully, "is just how He always does come."

[Sidenote: The story of a girl's adventure for a father's sake that may help girls who are at all like Anna.]
Anna
BY
KATHARINE S. MACQUOID
Three thousand feet up the side of a Swiss mountain a lateral valley strikes off in the direction of the heights that border the course of the Rhine on its way from Coire to Sargans. The closely-cropped, velvet-smooth turf, the abundant woods, sometimes of pine-trees and sometimes of beech and chestnut, give a smiling, park-like aspect to the broad green track, and suggest ideas of peace and plenty.
As the path gradually ascends on its way to Fadara the wealth of wild flowers increases, and adds to the beauty of the scene.
A few brown cow-stables are dotted about the flower-sprinkled meadows; a brook runs diagonally across the path, and some freshly-laid planks show that inhabitants are not far off; but there is not a living creature in sight. The grasshoppers keep up their perpetual chirrup, and if one looks among the flowers one can see the gleam of their scarlet wings as they jump; for the rest, the flowers and the birds have it all to themselves, and they sing their hymns and offer their incense in undisturbed solitude.
When one has crossed the brook and climbed an upward slope into the meadow beyond it, one enters a thick fir-wood full of fragrant shadow; at the end is a bank, green and high, crowned by a hedge, and all at once the quiet of the place has fled.
Such a variety of sounds come down the green bank! A cock is crowing loudly, and there is the bleat of a young calf; pigs are squeaking one against another, and in the midst of the din a dog begins to bark. At the farther corner, where the hedge retreats from its encroachments on the meadow, a grey house comes into view, with a signboard across its upper part announcing that here the tired traveller may get dinner and a bed.
Before the cock has done crowing--and really he goes on so long that it is a wonder he is not hoarse--another voice mingles with the rest.
It is a woman's voice, and, although neither hoarse nor shrill, it is no more musical than the crow of the other biped, who struts about on his widely-spread toes in the yard, to which Christina Fasch has come to feed the pigs. There are five of them, pink-nosed and yellow-coated, and they keep up a grunting and snarling chorus within their wooden enclosure, each struggling to oust a neighbour from his place near the trough while they all greedily await their food.
[Sidenote: "Come, Anna!"]
"Come, Anna, come," says the hard voice; "what a slow coach you are! I would do a thing three times over while you are thinking about it!"
* * * * *
The farmyard was