The Riff Choir knew only two anthems. The nurse leaned her tired head in its speckless little cap against the trunk of the cedar, and the tears welled up into her eyes.
She was tired, oh! so tired of hungering and thirsting, and the sun and the dust, so tired of the trampling struggle and turmoil of life, of being pushed from pillar to post, from patient to patient. For seventeen grinding years she had earned her bread in the house of strangers, and she was sick to death of it. And she had been handsome once, gay and self-confident once, innocent once. She had been determined that her mother should never know want. And she had never known it—never known either the straits to which her daughter had been reduced to keep that tiny home together. That was all over now. Her mother was dead, and her lover, if so he could be called, had passed out of her life. And as she sat on the bench she told herself for the hundredth time that there was no one to fight for her but herself. She felt old and worn-out and ashamed, and the tears fell. She had not been like this, cunning and self-seeking, to start with. Life had made her so. She shut her eyes, so that she might not see that graceful, pathetic creature, with its beautiful eyes fixed on the marbles, of whom she had dared to make a cat's paw.
But presently she felt a soft cheek pressed to hers, and an arm round her neck.
"Don't cry, Nursie," Harry said gently. "Brother Dick has gone to heaven," and he kissed her, as a child might kiss its mother. She winced at his touch, and then pushed back her hair, still thick and wavy, with the grey just beginning to show in it, and returned his kiss.
And as he stood before her she took his hands and held them tightly, her miserable eyes fixed on him.
A silent sob shook her, and then she said—
"You know where God lives, Harry?"
Harry disengaged one hand and pointed to the sky above him. He was not often sure of giving the right answer, but he had a happy confidence that this was correct.
"Yes," she went on, "God lives in the sky and looks down on us. He is looking at us now."
Harry glanced politely up at the heavens and then back at his companion.