She had forgotten Johnnie. Johnnie, who was ill unto death, whose illness had come through her fault. She remembered it all now: how she had crept downstairs, and then she thought of the doctor’s words: “Christmas Eve would decide if he were to live or die.”
Why had she gone away from him? Would she ever get back in time for Christmas Day? Would Johnnie be alive or dead when she reached home? As she stood there, asking herself these questions with a yearning homesick feeling overflowing her heart, Kitty felt something brushing tears from her cheek. She looked up. A tiny child, with little pink wings, was hovering about her. He was clothed in a tunic made of a bit of rainbow, and his face was the face of Johnnie. He had rosier cheeks, and he did not carry a crutch, for his little legs were straight.
“Who are you?” asked Kitty.
The rosy-winged child laughed, and the laugh was Johnnie’s laugh. Kitty heard Love’s voice speaking.
“I have given you each a guardian child. It was born of my kiss. But another companion also goes with you.”
Over every child Kitty now saw that there hovered a tiny figure on rosy wings, clothed in rainbow drapery. She saw with surprise also that every child had another attendant crouching on its left shoulder, a small elfish figure, which every now and then appeared to her to be half-animal, half-child, and in a strange fashion to take the form of an animal that bore some likeness to the child itself.
“You do not know,” Love went on, “and it is no wonder you should not, for you are all so young, that you have each a higher and a lower nature. To-night is Christmas Eve: good and evil sprites are abroad, fairies and elves. Strange sights are seen. To-night the lower nature—the naughty self—of each of you here has taken the shape of a little goblin, and goes about with you in visible form.”
Kitty looked fearfully round to her own left shoulder, and there, sure enough, was a little kitten-like creature with pointed ears and roguish eyes. It sat up with a defiant air as it peeped round at her with a sidelong glance. It appeared quite playful, but as Kitty looked at it the brown creature lost its kittenish air, and it was a face like her own, but quite small, that she saw looking back at her with her naughtiest expression.
Kitty started; then she heard Love’s voice still speaking: