“Oh, thank you, thank you!” cried Cis. “You can’t know how much I wanted it! Nor how I thank you! Truly, Mr. Lancaster, I’m so grateful I can’t say it. To think of your bothering with me.” “Oh, but, my dear Miss Adair! I protest! _Bothering_ with you! How dreadful! And not _grateful_, you know! Aren’t we friends? You must not be grateful to a friend! But I hope you’ll like your Missal; of course you will! Now I’m talking nonsense, too! I wanted you to have it for the Midnight Mass. You told me you’d never been to a midnight Mass! It’s supremely beautiful; the _Adeste_, and that fourth stanza at midnight: ‘_Ergo qui natus die hodierna_.’ Will you say one tiny prayer for the Missal-giver?” cried Anselm Lancaster, so boyishly that Cis, as well as Miss Braithwaite looked surprised, and Cis said with the greatest friendliness, out of her own boyish side: “I’ll say a big one! I’ll put you in with Miss Braithwaite and Nan. I’m going to receive for Nan; to-morrow is her wedding day. And someone who needs it most of all. I’ll put you into my intention, and if I mayn’t be grateful, Mr. Lancaster, I’ll be entirely ungrateful, but I’ll think you’re so good to me that I would be grateful if it weren’t terribly wrong to be anything but ungrateful!” Anselm Lancaster threw back his head and laughed aloud, and Miss Braithwaite joined him. Cicely’s nonsense delighted her watchful friend; it was a symptom of health. Anselm Lancaster had never seen her mischievous; he found it delightful. The church of St. Francis Xavier was crowded, but pews were held till ten minutes after midnight, and Miss Braithwaite had brought her two guests thither ten minutes before midnight tolled out from the clock on the adjoining house and school building. The Mass was beyond words solemn and beautiful: the vestments of cloth of gold; the myriad lights; the scent of forest and incense; the great organ, the hundred choristers, the sublime music, the _Adeste Fideles_, sung with such fervor that all over the church people were sobbing with love for this inexpressibly dear hymn. With this the Mass marched on to its supreme moment, the greatest, the most inconceivable, the one infinite action of finite man, which encircles all creation, from Adam to the last born at the consummation of the world, performed in time, going on eternally. Cicely was wrapt into something like ecstasy. The Christmas eve which she had dreaded had become the highest hour of joy which she had ever known. She was swept beyond herself into the rapture of the angels who first sang this Gloria to which she listened. God had tested her; she had not failed Him. Now He was rewarding her with a reward beyond her comprehension. She received this communion with her face wet with tears of joy. At last, at last she knew in Whom she had believed, blindly, yet faithfully believed. The rain had ceased when Mass was over; the congregation came out into starlight and an ice-clad world, shining under the light.