Somebodys Little Girl | Page 5

crying, too, and ran and caught Bessie Bell's
hand again and said to her again:
``I beg your pardon! Grant me grace! I hope the cat won't scratch your
face!''
So they went skipping down the walk together just as they had gone
before. Then Sister Mary Felice and Sister Theckla both said: ``Well!

Well!''
* * * * * *

One time it came about that Bessie Bell lay a long time in her little
white crib-bed, and she did not know why, and she did not care much
why. She did not get up and play in the sand while Sister Mary Felice
looked one hour at the little girls playing in the sand.
She scarcely wondered why she did not leave the crib-bed to sit on the
long gallery-step in a row with all the other little girls, all with their
feet on the gravel, and all eating the tiny cakes that Sister Ignatius made,
while Sister Angela sat on the bench under the magnolia-tree and
looked at the row of little girls.
If sometimes just at waking from fitful sleep in her crib-bed there came
to her just a thought, or a remembrance, of a great big soft white cat
that reached its paw out and softly touched her cheek, it came to her
only like the touch of fancy in a big soft white dream.
Often Only-Just-Ladies came and talked over her little white crib with
Sister Helen Vincula.
Bessie Bell's little fingers were no longer pink and round now; they lay
just white, so white and small, on the white spread. And Bessie Bell did
not mind how quiet she was told to be, for she was too tired to want to
make any noise at all.
One day it happened that an Only-Just-Lady came and said: ``Sister
Helen Vincula, I want to give you a ticket to carry you away to the high
mountain, and I want you to go to stay a month in my house on the
mountain, and I want you to carry this little sick girl with you. And
when you are there, Sister Helen Vincula, my bread-man will bring you
bread, and my milk-man will bring you milk, and my market-man from
the cove will bring you apples and eggs, and all the rest of the good
things that come up the mountain from the warm caves.''

``For,'' the Only-Just-Lady said, ``I want this little sick girl to grow
well again, and I want her little arms and legs and fingers to get round
and pink again.''
Bessie Bell thought that that was a very pretty tale that the Lady was
telling, but she did not know or understand that that tale was about her.
Then the Only-Just-Lady said, ``Sister Helen Vincula, it will do you
good, too, as well as this little girl to stay in the high mountains.
Not until all of Bessie Bell's little blue checked aprons, and all of her
little blue dresses, and all of her little white petticoats, and all of her
little white night-gowns, and even the tiny old night-gown with the
linen thread name worked on it, had been put with all the rest of her
small belongings into the old trunk with brass tacks in the leather, the
old, old trunk that had belonged to Sister Helen Vincula, did Bessie
Bell know that it was herself, little Bessie Bell, who was going away
Somewhere.
* * * * * *

It was a very strange new world to Bessie Bell, that new world up on
the High Mountain.
She did not think the grand views off the edge of the high mountain so
strange. But she loved to look out on those views as she stood by Sister
Helen Vincula on the graycliff; Sister Helen Vincula holding her hand
very fast while they both looked down into the valleys and coves. As
the shadows of evening crept up to the cliff whereon they stood, and as
those shadows folded round and round the points and coves, those
points and caves lying below and beyond fold over fold, everything
grew purple and violet.
Everything grew so purple, and so violet, and so great, and so wide that
it seemed sometimes to the little girl, standing on the cliff by Sister
Helen Vincula, that she was looking right down into the heart of a
violet as great, as wide--as great, as wide--as the whole world.

But this did not seem so strange to Bessie Bell, for she yet remembered
that window out of which one could see just small, green, moving
things, and of which great grown people had told her, ``No, Bessie Bell,
there is no such window in all the world.''
So in her own way she thought that maybe