As long as she lives Betsy will never forget what she saw that night through that window. Her eyes grew very hot and her hands very cold. Her heart thumped hard. She reached for little Molly and gave her a great hug in the darkness. Suppose it were little Molly asleep there, all alone in the dirty, dismal house, with no supper and nobody to put her to bed. She found that Ellen, next her, was crying quietly into the corner of her apron.
Nobody said a word. Stashie, who had the bundle, walked around soberly to the front door, put it down, and knocked loudly. They all darted away noiselessly to the road, to the shadow of the trees, and waited until the door opened. A square of yellow light appeared, with ’Lias’s figure, very small, at the bottom of it. They saw him stoop and pick up the bundle and go back into the house. Then they went quickly and silently back, separating at the cross-roads with no good-night greetings.
Molly and Betsy began to climb the hill to Putney Farm. It was a very warm night for May, and little Molly began to puff for breath. “Let’s sit down on this rock awhile and rest,” she said.
They were half-way up the hill now. From the rock they could see the lights in the farmhouses scattered along the valley road and on the side of the mountain opposite them, like big stars fallen from the multitude above. Betsy lay down on the rock and looked up at the stars. After a silence little Molly’s chirping voice said, “Oh, I thought you said we were going to march up to ’Lias in school and give him his clothes. Did you forget about that?”
Betsy gave a wriggle of shame as she remembered that plan. “No, we didn’t forget it,” she said. “We thought this would be a better way.”
“But how’ll ’Lias know who to thank?” asked Molly.
“That’s no matter,” said Betsy. Yes, it was Elizabeth-Ann-that-was who said that. And meant it, too. She was not even thinking of what she was saying. Between her and the stars, thick over her in the black, soft sky, she saw again that dirty, disordered room and the little boy, all alone, asleep with a piece of dry bread in his bony little fingers.
She looked hard and long at that picture, all the time seeing the quiet stars through it. And then she turned over and hid her face on the rock. She had said her “Now I lay me” every night since she could remember, but she had never prayed till she lay there with her face on the rock, saying over and over, “Oh, God, please, please, please make Mr. Pond adopt ’Lias.”