Sister Angela said: "Yes. The dreadful fever. It often leaves none in a house, and even sometimes none in a whole neighborhood to tell the story."
If, as Sister Angela and the pretty grown person talked, there came to Bessie Bell any thought of a great silent house, and a big white cat, with just one bit of black spot on its tail, why if such a thought came to Bessie Bell it came only to float away, away like white thistle seed—drifting away as dreams drift.
When the two pretty grown ones had gone away, then Sister Angela had nodded her head at the row of little girls, so that they might know that they might go on eating their cakes, for of course the little girls knew that they must hold their cakes in their hands and wait, and not eat, when Sister Angela had shaken her head gently at them while she talked to the two pretty ones. The little brown birds seemed to know, too, that they could come back to the gravel to look for crumbs again.
Then, as the little girls were again eating their cakes, one little girl said: "Sister Angela, were they Sisters?"
Sister Angela said: "No, they are not Sisters."
Then another little girl asked: "Sister Angela, what were they, then?"
Sister Angela said: "They are only just ladies."
Then always after that Bessie Bell and the other little girls were glad when Only-Just-Ladies came to see them.
The sun shone nearly always, or it seemed to the little girls that it nearly always shone, out in that large garden where they could play the hour in the sand, and where they could spend one hour eating their cakes with their feet on the gravel, and where they could walk behind Sister Justina on all the shell-bordered walks around the beds (but they must not step on the beds)—just one hour. If a rain came it always did surprise them: those little girls were always surprised when it rained! and they did not know exactly what to do when it rained, though they knew almost always what to do when the sun shone. One day when it rained it happened that the little girls were all left over the one hour in the long room where all the rows and rows of the little arm-chairs sat, and where all the little girls learned to Count, and to say Their Prayers, and to Tell the Time, and to sing "Angels Bright," and to know the A B C blocks. Sister Theckla, who always stayed the one hour in that room, had gone to say to the Sisters that the one hour was over, and that it was raining, and what must the little girls do now?
While Sister Theckla was gone, all the little girls went to the windows, and all the tiny girls looked at the rain coming down, coming down in drops, so many drops; and so fast the drops came that they seemed to come in long strings of drops straight from the sky.