“Oh, Mark, it is so pitiful to see her!—and I got so frightened; the whole room seemed filled with ghosts. Christmas seems her loneliest time. She won’t have but one candle lighted, and she sits and mopes in the dark. Oh, it’s dreadful! I tried to cheer her up, but she says she likes to sit in the dark, because then all the dead people she loves can come to her. Can’t we do something to make her happy? She is so lovely, and she is so little, and she is so dear!”
They had entered the house, now a blaze of light. Kate’s father was standing on the hearth rug, his back to a great fireplace filled with roaring logs.
“Where have you two gadabouts been?” he laughed merrily. “What do you mean by staying out this late? Don’t you know it’s Christmas Eve?”
“We’ve been to see Cousin Annie, daddy; and it would make your heart ache to look at her! She’s there all alone. Can’t you go down and bring her up here?”
“Yes, I could, but she wouldn’t come, not on Christmas Eve. Did she have her candle burning?”
“Yes, just one poor little miserable candle that hardly gave any light at all.”
“And it was in the corner on a little table?”
“Yes, all by itself.”
“Poor dear, she always lights it. She’s lighted it for almost twenty years.”
“Is it for somebody she loved who died?”