“No, dear, that was her baby name; isn’t it a pretty one?”
“Was she ever a baby?” asked Barby, looking with intense interest at Grace’s long figure under the bedclothes.
“Yes, indeed; she was once a little baby just like all you children.”
“O mamma! not a little one,” said Elyot incredulously.
“Not a wee, wee, teenty one,” said Barby, shaking her head.
“I guess she was as long as that,” said King, measuring off a piece on Grace’s frame, that he supposed a suitable length, “just about as long as that.”
“Take care, dear. You may touch her lame foot,” said Polly.
And then the children, who had been in the little brown house when the accident occurred, clamored to know all about it. But Polly was firm; and telling them they should hear how it happened on the morrow, she held Barby down for a good-night kiss, a proceeding all the others imitated, till the three swarmed around Grace’s pillow.
“Good-night,” said Barby, with a sleepy little hum; “do you say ‘Now-I-lay-me-down-to-seep’”?
“No,” said Grace. How long ago it seemed since she had felt too old to repeat that prayer!