"Yes, poor woman, she has given up the ghost. But" (and here he took out his knife and began to cut the rope) "here is your little sister, Jankó, that is, I mean, your reverence; my memory is as weak as a chicken's, and I always forget whom I am talking to. I've brought your reverence's little sister; where shall I put her down?"
And with that he lifted up the basket in which the child was sleeping soundly with the goose beside her. The bird seemed to be acting the part of nurse to her, driving off the flies which tried to settle on her little red mouth.
The autumn sunlight fell on the basket and the sleeping child, and Máté was standing with his watery blue eyes fixed on the priest's face, waiting for a word or a sign from him.
"Dead!" he murmured after a time. "Impossible. I had no feeling of it." He put his hand to his head, saying sadly, "No one told me, and I was not there at the funeral."
"I was not there either," said Máté, as though that would console the other for his absence; and then added, as an afterthought:
"God Almighty took her to Himself, He called her to His throne. He doesn't leave one of us here. Bother those frogs, now I've trodden on one!"
There were any amount of them in the weedy courtyard of the Presbytery; they came out of the holes in the damp walls of the old church.
"Where shall I put the child?" repeated Mr. Billeghi, but as he received no answer, he deposited her gently on the small veranda.
The priest stood with his eyes fixed on the ground; it seemed to him as though the earth, with the houses and gardens, Máté Billeghi and the basket, were all running away, and only he was standing there, unable to move one way or the other. From the Ukrica woods in the distance there came a rustling of leaves, seeming to bring with it a sound that spoke to his heart, the sound of his mother's voice. He listened, trembling, and trying to distinguish the words. Again they are repeated; what are they?
"János, János, take care of my child!"