The announcement caused a sensation. An audible murmur of amazement, not to say consternation, went up from all quarters of the edifice, floor and galleries; even the altar boys exchanged whispers with one another; and there was a great stretching of necks in the direction of Sabine Bob, who sat there in her uncushioned pew, very straight and very red, with set lips, while her rough old fingers played nervously with the rosary in her lap.
This was her victory! She had never felt the ugliness of her fifty years so cruelly before. A bony, ridiculous old maid, making a fool of herself in public! That was the sum of it! And all her life she had been so careful, so jealously careful, not to do anything that might cause her to be laughed at!
She could hear some of the whispers that were being exchanged in neighboring pews. "Poor old thing!" people were saying. "But how could she expect anybody would want to marry her at her age!"
A trembling like ague seized her, and she felt suddenly very cold and very very weak. She shut her eyes, for things were beginning to flicker and whirl; and when she opened them again, they were caught and held by the picture above the high altar.
It was the Mother. The Mother and the Little One. He lay in her arms and smiled.
The tears gushed up in Sabine Bob's eyes, and a smile of wonderful tenderness and peace broke over the harsh lines of her face and transfigured it, just for one instant. It was a victory; it was a victory; though nobody knew it but herself; just herself, and one other, and—perhaps—
Sabine still gazed at the picture, poor old Sabine Bob in her brown coat and faded little yellow-black hat: and the Eternal Mother returned the gaze of the Eternal Mother, smiling; and it didn't matter very much after that—how could it?—what people might think or say in Petit Espoir.
Once more, that afternoon, as she slashed the suds over the dishes, Sabine Bob was singing. You could hear her way down there on the street, so buoyant and so merry was her voice:
Long live the Canadian maid;
Fly, fly, oh fly, my heart!