1. "What a sharp night it is, Peter, to be sure!" said a pale woman to her husband, as she sat rocking her baby in its cradle by the fire.  
2. She had been but poorly, and had felt the cold very much. "Very sharp, indeed!" said her husband. "I feel pains in all my poor old bones."
 
3. "If you and I feel cold here," said he, "by the warm fire, after our good supper, what must it be outside, for those poor souls that have nothing to eat, and no fire?"[Pg 51]
 
4. "Ah, bad indeed!" said his wife. "And for the poor dumb beasts, too. How glad I am that we had that nice dry house made for the cow this summer, and the new place for the cocks and hens!
 
5. "They would have been half frozen under that broken roof as it used to be when we first came here."
 
6. Her eldest¹ child, a little-girl, looked up from her knitting. "The hens are all quite snug², mother, Fluffy³ and Biddy and the rest. I peeped in just now, after they were gone to roost."
 
7. "You are always a kind little one to the dumb things," said her father, stroking the soft brown head of Mercy, who had just spoken. "And so is my little Nelly, too," he added, looking fondly at the second child, who sat on his knee.
 
8. "It is getting late for the children, Peter," said his wife. "Shall Mercy read a bit, before we go to bed?" So Mercy, who was a good scholar, took the Bible from the shelf and read aloud a few verses which her father found for her.
 
9. They told of the manger, and of how[Pg 52] the ox and the ass⁴ stood by one bitter night like this, when the infant Christ was laid in it long ago. "T............