“Yes,” answered Miss Deering with a faint flush.
“She will live till then. If, she suffers we must try opiates, but we will hardly need, I think.”
“And—the excitement—”
“She will not get excited. She is strangely tranquil. Do not disturb her serene hope, whatever it is.”
The day drew to a close again. Dil asked if she was not going to her own bed, and seemed quite content. Miss Mary came in early in the evening and sent Virginia to bed. She could not quite believe the dread fiat. For Dil might be made so happy in the years to come. Ah, God, must it be too late? It seemed like the refinement of cruelty.
She came back about midnight, but Miss Mary motioned her away, and then went out in the hall.
“You must go to bed in earnest,” she said. “You may be needed more later on. She is very quiet; but she lies there with her eyes wide open, as if she were seeing visions. I get a nap now and then; you see, I’m used to this kind of work.”
“I wish ’twas mornin’,” Dil said toward early dawn. “I want to hear the birds sing an’ the children playin’; they do laugh so glad an’ comfortin’. An’ I wisht there could be some babies tumblin’ round in the sweet grass. They’d like it so. Don’t you never have any babies?”
“There are other homes for babies,” was the reply.
“Do you s’pose it’ll ever get all round,—homes, an’ care, an’ joy, an’ such? There’s so many, you know. There was little girls in Barker’s Court who had to sew, an’ never could go out, not even Sundays. When ’twas nice, Bess an’ me used to go out on Sat’days. But the winter froze her all up. And the other poor children—”