"Get me a rosebud—one with the moss round it," she said to them.
They went out into the garden, and brought her one wet with dew.
She kissed it, and laid it in one of her little wooden shoes that stood upon the bed.
"Send them to him," she said wearily; "tell him I walked all the way."
Then her head drooped; then momentary consciousness died out: the old dull lifeless look crept over her face again like the shadow of death.
The starling spread his broad black wings above her head. She lay quite still once more. The women left the rosebud in the wooden shoe, not knowing what she meant.
Night fell. Mère Krebs watched beside her. Jeannot went down to the old church to beseech heaven with all his simple, ignorant, tortured soul. The villagers hovered about, talking in low sad voices, and wondering, and dropping one by one into their homes. They were sorry, very sorry; but what could they do?
It was quite night. The lights were put out in the lane. Jeannot, with Father Francis, prayed before the shrine of the Seven Sorrows. Mère Krebs slumbered in her rush-bottomed chair; she was old and worked hard. The starling was awake.
Bébée rose in her bed, and looked around, as she had done when she had asked for the moss-rosebud.
A sense of unutterable universal pain ached over all her body.