In the dingy rooms burned cheap tallow candles, and the little ones, with their poor wee gifts, were as happy as the brother and sister with the beautiful Christmas tree in the stately mansion.
One room only, a very small one, up in an attic in the lace-weavers’ quarters, was in darkness. By the window stood a little, sorrowful girl, very pale-faced, all alone, watching the snow-flakes.
It was very cold, and her clothes were thin and ragged. She shivered, for she was quite chilled through. She was an orphan. The father had died, oh! long ago, one whole year, an age in the life of a child. Only the week before, the mother was driven away to her last home in the paupers’ grave-yard, to rest in the plain deal coffin, till beautiful white wings should waft her up to Heaven the Golden.
It was very sad to see the little pale-faced child looking after the paupers’ cart, driven so roughly over the frozen ground, and the kind-hearted neighbors had pitied her, and, though they were poor lace-makers like the mother, they had given her food with their sympathy, and promised to help her on with the trade.
They were true-hearted, honest folk, but somehow in this joyous Christmas season they had all forgotten her, and, far up in the dreary attic-chamber of the old tenement-house, she looked out into the night and storm alone.
It was so dark in the room that she could not bear to leave the window, though the wind whistled in at the loose casement, making quite a clatter, and causing her little teeth to chatter with cold.
She was very hungry. She had eaten the last crust the night before, and everybody had been so busy. It was not strange, she thought, that they had forgotten her.
She could remember the last Christmas they were all together. How busy the mother was making the Christmas pie, and how the father brought home a wooden doll, saying, “’Tis for my good little daughter,” and kissed her. Then, taking her on his shoulder, he danced all about the room, and how the dear mother laughed.
She was so happy then, and now so desolate and wretched. Everybody else was happy; she heard the children shouting, and she was so faint and hungry.
Just then a man, in an oil-cloth coat and cap, came along, and lighted the street lamp opposite the window. That made it more cheerful; still, the child was so cold and hungry, she could bear it no longer.