The dreary winter days crept on apace, and, as they drew near Christmas, dwellers in the streets leading off the Strand grew accustomed of nights to hear the plaintive voice of a woman, singing in a peculiarly thrilling and pathetic manner some of the old songs and ballads familiar and dear to the heart of every Englishman--“The Banks of Allan Water,” “The Bailiff’s Daughter,” “Sally in our Alley,” “The Last Rose of Summer.” All these well-loved ditties she sang one after the other, and, though her notes were neither fresh nor powerful, they were true and often tender, more particularly in the hackneyed, but still captivating, melody of “Home, Sweet Home.” Windows were opened, and pennies freely showered on the street vocalist, who was accompanied in all her wanderings by a fragile infant, which she seemed to carry with especial care and tenderness. Sometimes, too, in the bleak afternoons, she would be seen wending her way through mud and mire, setting her weary face against the bitter east wind, and patiently singing on; and motherly women, coming from the gay shops and stores, where they had been purchasing Christmas toys for their own children, would often stop to look at the baby’s pinched, white features with pity, and would say, while giving their spare pennies, “Poor little thing! Is it not very ill?” And Liz, her heart freezing with sudden terror, would exclaim, hurriedly, “Oh, no, no! It is always pale; it is just a little bit weak, that’s all!” And the kindly questioners, touched by the large despair of her dark eyes, would pass on and say no more. And Christmas came--the birthday of the Child Christ--a feast the sacred meaning of which was unknown to Liz; she only recognized it as a sort of large and somewhat dull bank-holiday, when all London devoted itself to church-going and the eating of roast beef and plum-pudding. The whole thing was incomprehensible to her mind, but even her sad countenance was brighter than usual on Christmas eve, and she felt almost gay, for had she not, by means of a little extra starvation on her own part, been able to buy a wondrous gold-and-crimson worsted bird suspended from an elastic string, a bird which bobbed up and down to command in the most lively and artistic manner? And had not her hired baby actually laughed at the clumsy toy--laughed an elfish and weird laugh, the first it had ever indulged in? And Liz had laughed too, for pure gladness in the child’s mirth, and the worsted bird became a sort of uncouth charm to make them both merry.