Only the neighbor woman was at the farm-house next day to comfort the little girl and help her through the sad hours. There was no sign of the pig-wagon all morning, and as the afternoon passed slowly away the little girl ceased to strain her eyes along the road leading to the school-house, and never left her mother's side. It was the neighbor woman who, not daring to leave the room even to do the chores about the barn and coops, looked south every few moments with the hope that the biggest brother would return before it was too late.
As the day drew toward its close the sun, which had been lurking sulkily behind the clouds, came out brightly and shone into the sitting-room, where its beams lay across the foot of the canopied bed like a warm coverlet. The room was robbed of its gloom, and the little girl's mother opened her eyes and looked about her, long and thoughtfully, as one gazes upon a loved scene that is drifting from sight.
The walls were hung with spatter-work that the biggest brother had done, and with photographs and magazine pictures in splint frames. Over the front door was tacked the first yarn motto that the little girl had ever worked. It was faded, but her mother, though her eyes were dimming, could read the uneven line: "God Bless Our Home." The new cane-seated chairs were set about against the walls, and a bright blue cover hid the round, oak center-table. The eldest brother's violin lay in its case on the organ that had come into the house the month before when the wheat was sold. Up on the clock-shelf was a Dresden shepherd in stately pose before his dainty shepherdess. The curtains on the windows hung white and soft to the carpet.
Presently the mother asked to be raised on her pillow, and the neighbor woman and the little girl turned the bed so that she could look out of the windows at the setting sun.
The western heavens rioted in a fuller beauty that afternoon than had the eastern half at moon-rise the night before. As the sun sank behind the clouds piled high upon the horizon, it colored them in gorgeous array and threw them out in wonderful shapes and sharp relief against a clearing sky. Castles towered on one side, vast turrets standing forth above their walls; on the other, banks of tinted vapor formed a huge cloud-seat.
The little girl, calm, though her heart was torn with pain, looked out with her mother upon the dying glories. She had often before in her life seen that changing panorama which, thrown up one moment, melted into nothingness the next. At night she had learned to kneel with her face that way,—to the great billows that always seemed to her a seat in the sky, that were always something more than mere vapor. She could pray better when, long after sundown, they hung above the horizon, robbed of their colors but still glorious. And there had grown up in her mind the comforting thought that on those very billows was God's throne, and from them, at sunset, He looked down upon that part of the earth that was sinking into the night, and blessed it and told it farewell. She even thought she could see His face in the heavens sometimes,—His flowing white robes, and the amethyst stool upon which He rested his feet.
As the sun dropped behind the prairie, the cloud-throne loomed forth against the blue more vividly than ever. The little girl kept her eyes dumbly upon it, watching the crimson and gold slowly fade to royal purple where the King sat.
"Remember what I said, pet lamb," her mother whispered. She could not see, yet she was still holding the little girl's hands firmly. "Remember what I told you to do."
The little girl could not answer; she could only bow her head in reply. Tearless, she waited beside the bed, where, for the second time, Life was striving with Death,—and was to lose. There was no sound in the room until there came a last whisper, "Pray."