“A dress for me!” cried little Anne, forestalling her mother. “It is for my First Communion. Mother is making it only straight and full because she likes it simple, she says. These queer places with the threads all pulled out aren’t wrong, Kit; they’re for hemstitching and it’s lovely. Mother’s making it every bit by hand, by her hand. I’ll pray for you that day, Kit; then you’ll be all right. Is anything not all right now, dear Kit?”
“Everything is perfectly right, little Anne,” Kit answered, “but I wouldn’t mind being prayed for by you, if you wouldn’t mind doing it. Queer little Anne!”
He kissed her thin cheek, clasping the small eager face raised to him, its great eyes searching his face as if they would read his soul.
“Everyone! Everyone in all this world that I love!” little Anne solemnly assured him. “It will be on Corpus Christi, at the nine-o’clock Mass, in the real church; not the basement. Kit, I shall walk up the aisle all in white and have on a veil, and, and, Kit, I do hope, hope I shall not die before that! And Father is going to give the flowers, and so is Antony. And we shall all be there, in the church, all my own I love. Even Peter-two!”
“And I? Might I come?” asked Kit, hesitating whether he should ask the privilege.
“Oh, goody, goody!” cried little Anne, instantly changed back into a joyous little girl, and whirling madly about, clapping her hands. “Kit can come, Kit can come! All K’s—no; all C’s—no; well, it sounds all something alike, anyway! What a day it will be! Mother, Kit will come to the church for me!”
“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Berkley. “Thank you, Kit, for loving my little Anne. Must you go? Come again soon, dear Kit Carrington!”
Then all went out on the steps to see him off: Joan, with her baby on her hip; Peter, dignified, but affectionate to Kit, whom he admired; Mrs. Berkley, motherly and kind; little Anne clinging fondly to his hand.
As he walked down the street he felt that he had learned the wisdom that he had gone to seek.