The kind eyes studied her with concern.
“I’m well. I never do get sick.”
“Do you know where your mother is?”
“Not the street. No, ma’am. The people have a queer long name. An’ she’ll be late th’ night.”
Mrs. Murphy looked in the door.
“Ah, yer up, an’ ye do look better. Hev ye had anything to ate? Do ye mind if I have Mrs. Minch come up-stairs just a bit?”
“Oh, no.” Dil did not notice the strain in the eyes, the awesomeness of facing death.
“I cudden’t be alone. She’s roused, but she’s almost gone; fightin’ fer life, one may say, at the very end,” she whispered as they went up the stairs.
The babies were amusing themselves. Dil uncovered the face of her dead, and looked long and earnestly, as if she knew there was a great mystery she ought to solve. Ah, how sweet she was! Dil’s heart swelled with a sense of triumph. She had always been so proud of Bess’s beauty.
But what was dead? It happened any time, and to anybody, to babies mostly, and made you cold and still, useless. Then you were taken away and buried. It was altogether different from going to heaven. What strange power had taken Bess, and kept her from that blessed journey? Why did the Lord Jesus let any one do it? John Travis couldn’t have been so mistaken, and Christiana, and the children.