Somebodys Little Girl | Page 3

many,
many little brown crumbs for little brown birds to find.
But if they were dropped, even if by rare chance were the crumbs so
large as to be nearly as large as half of a cake--why then, that crumb
had to stay for those little birds. It was the law! The law that the little
girls had made for themselves, and nobody but themselves knew about
that law--for the good of the birds. But no little girl cared to disobey
that law of their own that nobody but themselves knew about, for if one
had--how dreadful it would have been--no little girl would have played
with her until--oh, so long, so long--until she might at last have been
forgiven!
So all the little brown crumbs that the tiny little girls did drop, why the
tiny little brown birds did pick up,--and they never said whether they
liked caraway seeds or not!
* * * * * *

One day when the tiny little girls were all in a row eating cakes, Sister
Angela, sitting on a bench under the magnolia, said quite suddenly:

``Good morning!''
She rose up from her seat under the great magnolia.
Then the little brown birds fluttered up from the gravel.
Then all the little girls looked up.
There stood two pretty grown-up people.
And these two grown-up people had no soft white around their faces
like the soft white around the face that Sister Angela wore, and they
had no black veils, soft and long like the black veil that Sister Angela
wore. And they had no little white crosses like the small white cross
that Sister Angela wore on the breast of her soft black dress.
One of the pretty-grown up folks looked at one of the little tiny girls
and said: ``And what is her name?''
Sister Angela said: ``Bessie Bell was written on her little white
night-gown, done in linen thread.''
And Sister Angela said: ``Yes, we have always kept the little white
night-gown.''
And one of the pretty grown-up people said: ``Yes, that was right.
Always to keep the little white night-gown.''
And the other grown-up person said: ``And how comes that to be all
that you know?''
Sister Angela said: ``Because of the fever.''
And the pretty one said: ``The dreadful fever!''
Sister Angela said: ``Yes. The dreadful fever. It often leaves none in a
house, and even sometimes none in a whole neighborhood to tell the
story.''

If, as Sister Angela and the pretty grown person talked, there came to
Bessie Bell any thought of a great silent house, and a big white cat,
with just one bit of black spot on its tail, why if such a thought came to
Bessie Bell it came only to float away, away like white thistle
seed--drifting away as dreams drift.
When the two pretty grown ones had gone away, then Sister Angela
had nodded her head at the row of little girls, so that they might know
that they might go on eating their cakes, for of course the little girls
knew that they must hold their cakes in their hands and wait, and not
eat, when Sister Angela had shaken her head gently at them while she
talked to the two pretty ones. The little brown birds seemed to know,
too, that they could come back to the gravel to look for crumbs again.
Then, as the little girls were again eating their cakes, one little girl said:
``Sister Angela, were they Sisters?''
Sister Angela said: ``No, they are not Sisters.''
Then another little girl asked: ``Sister Angela, what were they, then?''
Sister Angela said: ``They are only just ladies.''
Then always after that Bessie Bell and the other little girls were glad
when Only-Just-Ladies came to see them.
The sun shone nearly always, or it seemed to the little girls that it
nearly always shone, out in that large garden where they could play the
hour in the sand, and where they could spend one hour eating their
cakes with their feet on the gravel, and where they could walk behind
Sister Justina on all the shell-bordered walks around the beds (but they
must not step on the beds)--just one hour. If a rain came it always did
surprise them: those little girls were always surprised when it rained!
and they did not know exactly what to do when it rained, though they
knew almost always what to do when the sun shone. One day when it
rained it happened that the little girls were all left over the one hour in
the long room where all the rows and rows of the little arm-chairs sat,
and where all the little girls learned to Count, and to say Their Prayers,

and to Tell the Time, and to sing ``Angels Bright,''