"Well—you'll see the same old world next week this time. Don't you get frightened, Hanny dear," and Ben kissed her reassuringly.
She sat by the boys and knit on her lace a while. Then her mother looked up from the stockings she was darning. She said "she always took Time by the forelock," and the little girl had a fancy some time she would drag him out. She wondered if she would really like to see Time with his hour-glass and scythe, and all his bones showing.
Mrs. Underhill looked up at the clock.
"My goodness, Hanny!" she exclaimed, "it's time you were in bed half an hour ago. Put up your lace. You'll be sleepy enough in the morning."
The little girl wound it round her needles and then stuck the ends in the stem of the spool and put it away in her basket. She kissed Ben and Jim good-night, and followed her mother. Her eyes had a half-frightened look and the pupils were very large. Mrs. Underhill felt out of patience that there should be so much talk about the world coming to an end before children. She knew Hanny was "just alive with terror." She couldn't pretend to explain anything to her; she was of the opinion that as you grew older "you found out things for yourself." And I am really afraid she didn't believe in total depravity for sweet little girls like Hanny. It was well enough for boys. So much of her life had been spent in doing, that she might have neglected some of the "mint, anise, and cummin." She undressed the little girl. Oh, how fair and pretty her shoulders were, and her round white arms that had a dimple at the top of the elbow. She was small for her age, but nice and plump, and her mother felt just this minute as if she would like to cuddle her up in her arms and kiss her as she had in babyhood. If she had, all the fear would have gone out of the little girl's heart.
Hanny said her prayer, and added to it, "Oh, Lord Jesus, please don't let the world come to an end to-night." Then her mother patted down the bed, took off one pillow and the pretty top quilt, and put her in, kissing her tenderly, the little trembling thing.
Then she stood still awhile.
"I do wonder what I did with your red coat," she began. "Cousin Cynthia said it might be let down and do for this winter. There's no little girl to grow into your clothes. Let me see—I put a lot of things in this closet. I remember pinning them up in linen pillow-cases, but I meant to store them in the cedar chest. I wonder if I have been that careless."
She stood up on a chair and threw down some bundles with unnecessary force. Then she stepped down and began to look them over, keeping up a running comment. She would not have admitted that she was talking against time, secretly hoping the little girl would drop off to sleep. But the coat was not in any of the bundles.
"I think it must be in the chest. While I'm about it I may as well go and see. If you have outgrown it, it could be made over into a dress; it's nice, fine merino, a little thicker than I'd buy for a dress, but your father would have just that piece. I'll get a candle and go up-stairs—I wouldn't trust a glass lamp with this horrid burning-fluid in my storeroom. Hanny, be sure you don't get up and touch it," as if there was the slightest possibility. "I'll be down again in five minutes."