The Christmas Child

The Christmas Child, by Hesba
Stretton

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Title: The Christmas Child
Author: Hesba Stretton
Illustrator: K. Street
Release Date: January 27, 2007 [EBook #20453]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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THE CHRISTMAS CHILD

BY
HESBA STRETTON
AUTHOR OF "JESSICA'S FIRST PRAYER"
ILLUSTRATED BY K. STREET
NEW YORK THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT, 1909 BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.
Published, September, 1909
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.
[Illustration: NATHAN LIGHTED HER STEPS]
[Illustration: Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners
reconciled.]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE COMING OF JOAN 1
II. JOAN'S SEARCH 10
III. THE CHILD IN THE MANGER 28
IV. LOST AND FOUND 40

ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Nathan lighted her steps Frontispiece

The two were never apart 8
Joan saw her aunt standing by her bedside 54
Nathan came upstairs to visit Rhoda 60

THE CHRISTMAS CHILD
CHAPTER I
THE COMING OF JOAN
Along some parts of the coast in South Wales the mountains rise
abruptly from the shore, with only a narrow shingle between them and
the sea.
High above the coast, however, there are warm, sunny little valleys and
dells among the hills, where sheep can find pasture and a fold; and here
there are many small farmsteads, surrounded by wild rocks and bleak
uplands, where the farmer and his family live with their servants, if
they happen to have any, as they used to do in old times, sitting in the
same kitchen, and taking their meals together as one household.
Miss Priscilla Parry was the last of three leaseholders of one of these
little farms. Her grandfather had enclosed the meadows and the
corn-fields from the open mountain, on condition that he should have a
lease for three lives from the owner of the land. His own and his son's
had been two of the lives, and Priscilla's was the third.
The farm was poor, for the land was hard to cultivate. In every field
there were places where the rocks pierced through the scanty soil, and
stood out, grey and sharp, amid the grass and the ripening corn. The
salt-laden winds and the fogs from the sea swept over them. Miss
Priscilla spent no money in draining or manuring them; for was not the
lease to pass away when she died, and she was nearly sixty years of age
already?

But the sheep and the cows throve wonderfully on the short, sweet
herbage they browsed on the mountains; and her butter and cheese, and
the mutton she sold to the butchers, were known through all the country.
Nobody could produce finer. Every one knew she was saving money up
in her little mountain farmstead, and the money was being carefully
laid by for Rhoda Parry, the niece she had adopted in her infancy and
brought up as her own child.
Miss Priscilla was a spare, hard-featured woman, with a
weather-stained face, and hands as horny as a man's with farm-work.
Twice a week she wore a bonnet and shawl, when she went to market
or church. All other times her head was covered by a cotton hood,
which could not be damaged by rain, snow, or wind; and in bad
weather she often went about her farm with an old sack over her
shoulders. Her shoes were as thick and as heavily nailed as old
Nathan's, her head servant, and she strode in and out of her sheds and
stables and pigsties as if she had been a man. It was said she could get
more work done for smaller wages than any farmer in the country.
There was not a prettier girl in all the parish, which was ten miles
across, than Rhoda Parry, and she was always prettily and daintily
dressed. She had her share of the work to do, but it was the easiest and
most pleasant. If the weather was fine and clear, she might go to call
the cattle home from their cool and breezy pasturage on the mountain
side. The cows she had to milk were the gentle ones, that never kicked.
Aunt Priscilla did the churning of the cream, but Rhoda made the butter
up into pretty golden pats, and wrapped them in cool, dark-green leaves.
Rhoda tended the little flower patches in the garden, whilst her aunt
saw to