“Youse ain’t no need ter feel bad,” she said, as she put her arms round the kind friend’s neck. And then suddenly, in a great fear of she knew not what, she scampered off as fast as her feet would let her. They were very tired and lame little feet now.
XV.
THAT DAY WHEN ALLY WAS LOST.
The morning had deepened into late forenoon before—going a little way, and resting a little while, and going on again, and stopping a moment to cry, and talking to the baby—Sally gave herself up to rest.
She had come to a place of velvet grass, a glen, that although shut in with green hills, yet gave her a sense of being high in clear sweet air. A stream trickled over some upper cliff in a thin waterfall that gave a murmuring sound. And as the baby was fretting, Sally thought it might be time for his second dinner; and almost before he had finished it, braced by the mountain air and weary with her walk, she fell as sound asleep as the baby did.
Sally opened her eyes an hour or two afterwards to behold, bending over her, the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
It was a golden-haired child with big blue eyes shining out of a flushed and smiling, wondering face.
Sally had heard somewhere, she did not know where, but very vaguely, of such a place as Heaven, of such a thing as an angel. Now she lay there on the soft warm grass, and looked up at the velvet blue sky, and smelled the wind wandering by laden with the breath of the wild sweet-brier, and remembered the wings of the low-darting birds, the murmur of the waterfall, and she came to the instant conclusion that this was Heaven, and that so her mother was not far off.
“Say! Be youse an angel?” she whispered.