"I guess we're all mournin' together," said Mrs. Canary. "Mr. Canary wouldn't tech fish fer dinner,—Holly Belle is all stuffed up with tears, an' Friddie hangs round their door till I just expect Mis' Lee'll throw water on him to git red of him. The children are all a-prayin' for her ev'ry night, an' if God kin resest their innercent pleadin' it's more'n I could do."
"It's Cherry Street that's nadin' her more than Hivin does," said Mrs. Hennesy.
"I guess it does!" exclaimed Mrs. Canary fervently. "We can't do without her. The children just fairly adore her image, the big boys and girls all love her, and the fathers and mothers need her the most of all. If she'd never done a thing fer us but to show that pretty smile of hers, an' let us see her eyes shine, an' hear her sweet voice, we'd miss her enough: but rememberin' all she has done——" Words failed the good woman, and her sentence ended abruptly.
"I suppose there's not a thing a person could do to help," said Mrs. Hennesy.
"Not a thing. The house is full of flowers, and things to eat. They've got a nurse that looks like striped stick candy, an' two doctors, an' more offers of help than they know what to do with. There ain't a thing we can do but watch—an' pray. An' if the Lord sees fit to call her Home——"
But Mrs. Hennesy, drawing the shawl again over her eyes, turned away.
The mist of Indian summer lay like a veil over Cherry Street. Out in the garden Miss Billy's flowers were still blooming. The vines were breaking into crisp little tendrils about her window, the La France rose bush was heavy with buds, and the grass was as green and tender as when her feet had last pressed it. Miss Billy's friend, the bulldog, slept serenely on the Lee porch, and her canary trilled softly in the autumn sunshine.
Life seemed to have vanished from the street itself. Down near the Levi house two wooden saw-horses and a plank had been placed across the road to block all traffic, and Policeman Canary paced back and forth to ward off intruders. Grocery boys and butcher lads came and went on foot, and the children who played in the back yards were hushed and subdued by watchful parents "for Miss Billy's sake." Silence reigned everywhere, and the chirping of the twittering sparrows, that could not be hushed, was the only sound that broke the stillness.
Upstairs, in the little green room, where the only movement was the stirring of the thin curtains in the soft wind, lay the girl herself. The active feet were quiet, the busy hands were folded and the dancing eyes were closed. There was nothing about the passive figure that was like Miss Billy. Even the mass of copper-brown hair had been cut away. But this death-like stupor was less terrifying than the intervals of raging fever in which Miss Billy laughed, sang and talked, and lived over and over again her girlish trials and hopes and fears.