I’ll never forget his face when he turned to Mis’ Sykes. It wasn’t hard or cross or accusing--I guess he knew she was just at her crooked way of trying to be decent! But he made her know firm that if he led the children’s march, he’d lead it with Chris.--And it was so he done. ...Down the long green they come, side by side. And the other children fell in behind, and they circled out into a great orbit, with the Christmas tree in the middle of it. And folks begun to see who the man was at the head, and the word run round, and they all broke out and cheered and called out to him. Oh, it was a great minute. I like to think about it. And then the murmur begun running round that it was Chris that was with him. And Mame Holcomb and Eppleby and Mis’ Toplady and me, watching from the booth, we knew how everybody was looking at everybody else to see what to think--like folks do. But they didn’t know--not yet. Then something wonderful happened. Halfway round the Square, Abner noticed that Chris didn’t have any wand, same as the other children had. And so, when he was passing the big Cedar-of-Lebanon-looking Christmas tree, what did he do but break off a little branch and put that in Chris’s hand. And Chris come on a-waving it, a bough off that tree. I sort of sung all over when I saw that. The children ended up round a platform, and up there went the folks that had been picked out to lead the singing. And as they went they sung: “Oh, how lovely is the evening, is the evening, is the evening!” And in a minute, from first one place and then another the others took it up, them that had sung it in singing school, years ago-- “When the bells are sweetly chiming, sweetly chiming, sweetly chiming” and they sung it like a round, which it is, with a great fine booming bass of “Ding dong, ding dong, ding dong” all through it. Do you know that round? If you don’t, get it; and get some folks together somehow, and sing it. It lets you taste the evening. But I can’t tell you the way it seemed to us there in Friendship Village, met together after so many years, and singing together like we was all one Folk. One Folk. They sung other songs, while the dusk came on. Abner Dawes was sitting on the platform, and he kept Chris on his knee--I loved him for that. There wasn’t a set program. First one would start a song from somewheres in the crowd, and then another.... And all the time I was waiting for it to get dark enough to do what I had planned to be done--and what I’d had men working at near all the night before to get ready. And when the dark come thick enough, and just at the end, I remember of their singing “Flow Gently, Sweet Afton,” I thought it was time.