Vag stood up, shoved into his coat. It would be a good idea to check on the books he'd have to take home--he might as well spend the vacation studying, for with all the obnoxious children underfoot at home he would need some excuse to get away.

He walked across the Square--colored lights, and old rummies with tin pails asking for dimes and quarters, and all the stores leering out in the darkness, bright windows like dragons' jaws to eat money; money, money and that's Xmas. There's no such thing as Christmas. Into the Yard; lights here meant that guyes were going on studying or drinking or talking, whether it was Christmas or Mother's Day.

Vag was halfway up the Widner steps before he heard the singing from Appleton, faint through window and curtain, dropping back to him from the library's front. He stood a moment, hearing the whole church catch up a hymn and call back to the choir. There was no money here, no colored lights, no tinsel; Vag had the Yard to himself for a time, alone with leafless trees and space and darkness.

All quiet now in the church. Must be the prayer. What was it his grandfather used to read one December night a year? "And it came to pass that in those days there went forth . . ." Funny to remember that when he hadn't picked up a Bible in ten years. Luke II, wasn't it?

People came out of the Chapel, across the Yard. Vag slipped down to one group, heading south to sing some more, and crossed back over Massachusetts Avenue with them. There were the stores again, still garish, but they looked foolish now, alone against the bigness of the night. The lights above the sidewalk were dim if you set them against the Dipper, high and very bright indeed.

Vag laughed now. You idiots, he said to the windows full of cheap neckties. You silly bastards, he said to the bookstalls and the camera shops. You couldn't hear tonight, could you? You never hear St. Luke, do you? You can have your Xmas. I'll settle for Christmas.