It was well along in the afternoon. The dusk of the December twilight shut down speedily, around the little brown house and its happy occupants, but no one wanted the candles lighted till the last moment.
"Oh, Polly!" cried Joel, who was prancing as of old over the kitchen floor, "don't you remember that night when you said you wished you had two hundred candles, and you'd light them all at once?"
"I said a good many silly things in those days," said Polly meditatively, and smoothing Phronsie's yellow hair that was lying across her lap.
"Some silly ones, and a good many wise ones," observed Mother Pepper, over in her little old rocker in the west window, where she used to sit sewing up coats and sacks for the village storekeeper. "You kept us together many a time, Polly, when nothing else could."
"Oh! no, I didn't, Mamsie," protested Polly, guilty of contradicting, "you and Bessie did. I just washed dishes, and swept up, and"—
"Baked and brewed, and fussed and stewed," finished Joel, afraid of being too sentimental.
"Polly was just lovely in those days," said Davie, coming across the room to lay a cool cheek against her rosy one. "I liked the rainy days best when we all could stay in the house, and hear her sing and tell stories while she was working."
"She was cross sometimes," cried Joel, determined not to let reminiscences become too comfortable; "she used to scold me just awfully, I know."
Polly broke into a merry laugh; yet she exclaimed, "You poor Joey, I suppose I was dreadful!"
"You didn't catch one half as bad scoldings as belonged to you," put in Ben, thrusting another stick in the stove. "You were a bad lot, Joe, in those days."