Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/255

 and the look of fear faded away. She could not speak. Her lips were frozen.

Sister Annunziata made a gesture dismissing the janitress and then turned to the fat little priest. "We had better make haste," she murmured. "I will stay and hold her up. She cannot raise her own body."

And so they made ready to offer Miss Annie Spragg the last service they could give her on this earth and when Father Baldessare, after much panting and sweating, was ready Sister Annunziata knelt beside the bed and lifted the dying woman, resting the thin helpless body against her own gaunt shoulder. They found then that her hands were covered by white cotton gloves and when Father Baldessare tried to remove them a kind of convulsion shook her and into her eyes there came a look so terrible that Sister Annunziata understood her plea and they left her hands covered.

The fat little priest began to read the lines and administer the Sacrament and once more the little birds, no longer fearful, fluttered down one by one to the iron rail at the foot of the bed and sat in a row. The look of fear left the eyes of the dying woman and slowly the eyelids drooped with weariness.

When at last Father Baldessare had finished, the eyes opened a little way and again a look of pleading came into them. Then slowly in a kind of agony Annie Spragg lifted her right arm a little way and made a faint vague gesture which only Sister Annunziata understood. Still supporting the dying woman the nun leaned down and took from the chair the