“It’s a nice sleep ye’ve had,” said Mrs. Murphy’s kindly voice. “An’ it’s full bedtime, an’ past. They’ve all gone, an’ yer mother wants ye.”
Dil groped her way down-stairs. There was a vicious smell of beer and kerosene-smoke in the warm room.
“It’s time ye were in bed,” said her mother. “Ye kin sleep in there,” indicating her own room with a nod; “fer I’ll not sleep the night with me child lyin’ dead in the house. Bridget Malone has kem to stay wid me. We’ll jist sit up.”
“O mother,” cried Dil, aghast, “let me sleep in my own room! I’d rather be there with Bess.”
“Is the colleen’s head turned wid grafe? Sleepin’ wid a corpse! Who iver heerd of sich a thing? Indade ye’ll not, miss! Go to bed at wunst, an’ not a word outen you.”
Her first impulse was to defy the woman looming up so tall and authoritative. But the shrewd sense that comes early to the children of poverty restrained her. She would be worsted in the end, so she went reluctantly. Had she dreamed? No, it must be true. She could waken Bess. Again the uplifting hope took possession of her. She seemed wafted away to a beautiful country with Bess. So absorbing was the vision that it filled her with a certainty beyond the faintest doubt. She did not even take off her dress, but lay there wide-eyed and rapturous.
After a while the chatter ceased and the snoring began. How still it was everywhere! But Dil was not afraid.
X—IN THE DESERT ALONE
Dilsey Quinn rose with a peculiar lightness of heart, and seemed walking on air. A curious tingle sped through her nerves, and her eyes had a strange light of their own. She pushed the door open and looked out cautiously. Her mother was on the lounge. Bridget sat by the stove, her chair tilted back against the door-jamb. The lamp had been turned down a little, the stove-lid lifted; and it made a strange, soft semicircle on the ceiling, such as Dil had seen around the heads in pictures when she had stolen a glance at the show windows.
The silence, for that impressed her, in spite of snoring in different keys, and the weird aspect, made the room instinct with supernatural life. Dil did not understand this, but she felt it, and was filled and possessed by that exaltation of mysterious faith. She walked softly but fearlessly across the room,—if she could open the door without Bridget hearing.