"Fesh Barbedie's nightie-gown," she said majestically to the two revolutionaries.
But not all the boys' chivalric devotion, unstinted through that troublous night, could produce the desired garment. At last, arrayed in David's coat as a substitute, over her own dainty garments, little Barbedie Pelham fell to repose.
By this time the two little boys, huddled together like kittens or young-puppies on the outspread blanket, had fallen fast asleep. Barbara was snuggled in beside them, and the blanket carefully wrapped round the three. Sandy and David, with their backs against the parapet—the latter with Barbara's head upon his knees, whilst Sandy's performed the same office of pillow for his little brothers—prepared to win through the hours of darkness as patiently as they might. No word of reproof or bitterness had been said by either boy. Each bore his share manfully of the difficulty, for which both were perhaps equally responsible.
Down below, the lanterns flashed in and out of the ruins, and across the Palace grounds. Voices called, which, if the boys heard at all, seemed to them only the distant sounds of the day, to which they were accustomed. Their own frantic shouts some time ago, even Sandy's whistle, had been unheard and unheeded.
When the midnight chimes rang out softly over their heads, Sandy, rousing, said sleepily, "We forgot somefing, Dave. I've been dreamin' 'bout it."
"What?" David asked. He had not yet slept, and his mind had been busy, thinking, wondering, sorrowing, chiefly about his mother. In difficulties, hers was the personality which always presented itself to her children.
"We've forgot all our prayers."
"Say them now," suggested David after a pause.
"It'll wake 'em!"
"Not if we don't move."