Part 20 (2/2)

Mrs. Minch stopped as she went down-stairs.

”Poor old Mrs. Bolan has gone to the better land. She and Bess will have a Christmas with the angels. They will not want to come back here.”

Dil had no courage to argue. But she knew to the very farthest fibre of her being, that nothing could so change Bess that she would desire to stay anywhere without her.

Mrs. Garrick had heard the tidings before she came in for her baby, and was profuse in her sympathies.

”But it's the Lord's mercy, for she were a poor sufferer, and was jist waitin'. How did it happen? Was it in the night, whilst ye were all asleep? An' to think yer poor mother whint away knowin' nothin'.”

”I can't talk about it. I-I don't know.”

”An' old Mis' Bolan. Well, I'll run up-stairs a bit, an' see Mrs.

Murphy.”

She was rewarded for her trouble here; the strange curiosity of some, as if the dead face could answer the mystery.

”She's a moighty quare girl, that Dilsey Quinn. Niver to be askin' one to look at the corpse; an' if Bess hadn't been so peaked, she would have been a pritty child. She had such iligant hair.”

The neighbors began to make calls of condolence. Two deaths in a house was an event rather out of the common order of things.

Dil awed them by her quiet demeanor, and answered apathetically, busying herself with the supper.

”What hev ye done wid her?” asked one. ”Shure, she's not bin tuk away?”

”No; she's in ther', in my room. An'-an' she's mine.”

For to Dil there seemed something sacred about Bess, and she kept guard rigorously. It was not simply a dead body to gloat over. They could go up-stairs and look at Mrs. Bolan.

It was nine o'clock when her mother came home laden with budgets, and Dan following in a vaguely frightened manner. He had been hanging about Mrs. MacBride's, waiting for her. She had gone in and taken her ”sup o'

gin,” and heard the news, also the complaints.

”Whiniver did it happen, Dil?” throwing down her budgets. ”She's been no good to hersilf nor no wan else this long while. An' she cudden't iver git well, an' was a sight o' trouble. But I'm clear beat. Week after week I thought she'd be sure to go, but when you're lookin', the thing niver comes. An' it's took me so suddent like, that I had no breath left at all. Was it true-did ye find her dead, an' faint clear away?”

She looked rather admiringly at Dil.

”Yes-she were cold,” said Dil briefly. ”An' then I don't know what happened.”

”Ye pore colleen! Ye'll be better widout her, an' ye'll be gittin well an' strong agin. It's bin a hard thing, an' yer divil of a father shud a had his own back broke. But he's fast enough, and I hope they'll kape him there. Any word of Owny?”

”No.” Oh, what would Owny say-an' Patsey.

”Who kem an' streeked her? Let's see.”

She took the lamp and went in. It seemed to Dil as if she would even now shake her fist at Bess, and the child stood with bated breath.

”She were a purty little thing, Dil,” the mother said with a softened inflection. ”Me sister Morna had yellow hair an' purplish eyes, and was that fair an' sweet, but timid like. I believe me mother had some such hair, but the rest of us had black. She looks raile purty, an' makes a better corpse than I iver thought. Why didn't ye lit thim see her, Dil?

Ye's needn't a been shamed of her.”

<script>