I had been listening to this rhapsody with the greatest admiration, when just then Bittra came in. She has got over the most acute period of her grief, "except when," she says, "she looks at the sea and thinks of what is there."
"Alice is prophesying," I said; "she is going to take Father Letheby out of his purgatory on Monday."
"Ah, no, Daddy Dan, that's not fair. But I think he will be relieved from his cross."
"And what about your own troubles, Alice?" said Bittra. "Is the healing process going on?"
"Yes, indeed, thank God," she replied, "except here and there."
Bittra was watching me curiously. Now it is quite a certain fact, but I never dreamed of attaching any importance to it, that this child had recovered her perfect health, so far as that dreadful scrofulous affection extended, except in the palms of her hands and the soles of her feet, where there remained, to the doctor's intense disappointment, round, angry sores, about the size of a half-crown, and each surrounded with a nimbus of raw, red flesh, which bled periodically.
"And here, also," she said innocently this evening, "here on my side is a raw sore which sometimes is very painful and bleeds copiously. I have not shown the doctor that; but he gets quite cross about my hands and feet."
"It is very curious," I said, in my own purblind fashion, "but I suppose the extremities heal last."
"I shall walk home with you, Father Dan, if you have no objection," said Bittra.
"Come along, child," I replied. "Now, Alice, we shall be watching Monday, All Souls' Day."