She had seen trees thus ornamented, and she thought they were perfectly beautiful.
Kate was violently opposed to anything of this kind, and, at last, told Aunt Matilda that if she persisted in surrounding her house with what looked like a forest of tombstones, she, Kate, would have to stop coming there.
So Aunt Matilda, in a manner, desisted.
But one day she noticed a little birch-tree, some distance from the house, and the inclination to whitewash that little birch was too strong to be resisted.
"He's so near white, anyway," she said to herself, "dat it's a pity not to finish him." So off she hobbled with a tin cup full of whitewash and a small brush to adorn the little birch-tree, leaving her cabin in the charge of Holly Thomas.
Holly, whose whole name was Hollywood Cemetery Thomas, was a little black girl, between two and five years old.

Sometimes she seemed nearly five, and sometimes not more than two.

Her parents intended christening her Minerva, but hearing the name of the well-known Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, they thought it so pretty that they gave it to their little daughter, without the slightest idea, however, that it was the name of a grave-yard.
Holly had come over to pay a morning visit to Aunt Matilda, and she had brought her only child, a wooden doll, which she was trying to teach to walk, by dragging it head foremost by a long string tied around its neck.
"Now den, you Holly, you stay h'yar and mind de house while I's gone," said Aunt Matilda, as she departed.
"All yite," said the little darkey, and she sat down on the floor to prepare her child for a coat of whitewash; but she had not yet succeeded in convincing the doll of the importance of the operation when her attention was aroused by a dog just outside of the door.
It was Kate's little woolly white dog, Blinks, who often used to come to the cabin with her, and who sometimes, when he got a chance to run away, used to come alone, as he did this morning.
"Go 'way dar, litty dog," said Miss Holly, "yer can't come in; dere's nobody home.

Yun 'long, now, d'yer y'ear!" But Blinks either did not hear or did not care, for he stuck his head in at the door.
"Go 'way, dere!" shouted Holly.

"Aunt Tillum ain't home.