"No, indeed, Father. Before I was done with him it cost me a pound. But I applied his cosmetics and became daily worse. Then my mother spoke of making rounds. But I wouldn't leave her. I went to the school every day, but I saw the girls watching me. I heard them whisper to each other, and sometimes I caught their words. They weren't kind. Then I stopped away. One day, while I was sitting at the door knitting, suddenly the sun was darkened, and there was the dreadful face of that woman over me.
"'I'm asking charity for God's sake,' she said.
"I got up humbly and gave her bread and twopence. She looked at me keenly and said: 'God save you, alanna, and purtect you from misfortune. Sure, 't was only a hasty word you said. God save you and purtect you, alanna!'
"Then the frightful anger of God coming down upon me suddenly flashed upon me, and I flung aside my knitting and rushed into this room, and cried and screamed, and bit the counterpane until I tore it in threads, and shrieked:—
"'Don't! don't, O Lord; Oh, don't! don't!'
"And then I turned to the Blessed Virgin and said the little prayer 'Remember' that you taught us, Father; 'Remember;' and then I said:—
"'You won't let Him, Mother! you won't let Him! Didn't you say you wouldn't let Him?'
"But the face stared down at me pitilessly, pitilessly. There was no hope."
The poor child stopped again, and to relieve her from the pain of memory I said:—
"But wasn't the doctor called in all this time? The doctor is very clever, you know."