years, seemed awful alive that night. Every minute I thought he'd walk
in.

She likes you to think he's living at night. Every day she goes to his
grave, which is in the churchyard right next to where she lives; but at
night he comes back to life to her. She's so lonely, I think it's
beautiful that he comes.

I make out like I think he comes, too, and I always send him my love,
and ask how his rheumatism is. I tell you, Martha don't dare smile when
I do it. She don't even want to.

And, don't you know, old Mrs. Peet sent me a Christmas present, too. A
pair of mittens. She knit them herself. It was awful nice of her.

I don't know how big the check was that Miss Katherine's billionaire
brother sent her to spend on the children's Christmas, but it must have
been a corker. The things she bought with it cost money, and the change
it made in the Asylum was Cinderellary. It was.

She bought a carpet for the parlor, and some curtains for the windows,
and a bookcase of books.

For the dining-room she bought six new tables and sixty chairs. They
were plain, but to sit at a table with only ten at it instead of forty,
as I'd been sitting for many years, was to have a proud sensation in
your stomach. Mine got so gay I couldn't eat at the first meal.

To have a chair all to yourself, after sitting on benches so old they
were worn on both edges, was to feel like the Queen of Sheba, and I felt