Page:Minnie's Bishop and Other Stories (1915).djvu/151

 suppose this is because I do not love them much, never having had any child of my own. But I loved this child for the sake of the great hope that was in me. So I knelt beside her, and prayed for his life. Quickly, as it seemed to me, the daylight faded away, and it came to be evening and then night. Still I prayed, and I could hear her singing softly and rocking him to and fro in her arms. It grew very dark. I did not think that any night was so dark as that one was. I could see nothing except the shine of the blue halo moving gently from side to side as she swayed the child. When I got weary praying, I looked at it and took courage and fresh strength from it. Once, it must have been early in the morning, I missed the halo. I gazed with all my might, but I could not see it. Then I knew that the child was dead. I remembered that for some time he had not cried. I did not tell her that he was dead, for she had ceased singing and sat still, so that I thought she slept. Perhaps after that I slept too, huddled on the floor beside her. When I next remember anything, the morning light was coming into the room. She was awake also; but she did not know even then that the child was dead. She was rocking him in her arms as she had done before, and singing her foolish little songs to him.

"Then, I think it must have been about seven o'clock, I heard a voice in the next room, and the man rose and came into the chamber where we