“A little.”
“And—you said Cinderella’s coach was down near my papa’s gate?”
“So it is, dearie.” Then looking cautiously about her, and lowering her voice to a whisper: “How would you like to ride to see Mother Hubbard in Cinderella’s coach, and come right back, you know, before it turns into a pumpkin again?”
The fair child clasps two tiny hands, and utters a cry of delight.
“Oh! could we?” she asks, breathlessly.
“Of course we can, if you are very quiet and do as I bid you, and if you don’t get afraid.”
“I don’t get afraid—not often,” replies the child, drawing still closer to Mother Goose, and speaking with hushed gravity. “When I used to be afraid at night, my mamma, my new mamma, you know, taught me to say like this.”
Clasping her hands, she sinks upon her knees and lifts her face to that which, behind its grotesque mask, is distorted by some unpleasant emotion. And then the childish voice lisps reverently:
“Dear God, please take care of a little girl whose mamma has gone to Heaven. Keep her from sin, and sickness, and danger. Make the dark as safe as the day, and don’t let her be afraid, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.”
Something like a smothered imprecation dies away in the throat of the listener, and then she says, in honeyed accents: