Page:Balkan Short Stories.djvu/133

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ALL SOULS' DAY

I DO not know how often on All Souls' Day she had been to the graveyard of Koscher, but today she is hurrying there again, and her feet do not bear her as nimbly as of yore. Everything else, however, was just as it used to be years ago. At eleven o'clock her heavy body got out of the droshky, then came the coachman carrying gravewreaths, wrapped in a piece of white cloth, and last a five year old child, warmly dressed. This little girl had been five years old for fifteen years. Every year Miss Mary borrows her in the neighborhood.

“There, my dear! Now look—look at the crowd of people. It's a good sized crowd, isn't it? And the candles, and the little lamps, and the flowers! Go on, my child—go on! Don't be afraid. Go right ahead wherever you wish. I am coming right behind you.”

The child walks timidly along. Miss Mary fol-

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