led up the
shawl which had slipped from her sister's shoulders.

"How long you've been! What's he been saying?"

"Oh, he went long ago--he on'y stopped to give me a prescription. I was
sorting out that tray of buttons. Miss Mellins's girl got them all mixed
up."

She felt Evelina's eyes upon her.

"He must have said something: what was it?"

"Why, he said you'd have to be careful--and stay in bed--and take this
new medicine he's given you."

"Did he say I was going to get well?"

"Why, Evelina!"

"What's the use, Ann Eliza? You can't deceive me. I've just been up to
look at myself in the glass; and I saw plenty of 'em in the hospital
that looked like me. They didn't get well, and I ain't going to." Her
head dropped back. "It don't much matter--I'm about tired. On'y there's
one thing--Ann Eliza--"

The elder sister drew near to the bed.

"There's one thing I ain't told you. I didn't want to tell you yet
because I was afraid you might be sorry--but if he says I'm going to
die I've got to say it." She stopped to cough, and to Ann Eliza it now
seemed as though every cough struck a minute from the hours remaining to
her.

"Don't talk now--you're tired."

"I'll be tireder to-morrow, I guess. And I want you should know. Sit
down close to me--there."

Ann Eliza sat down in silence, stroking her shrunken hand.

"I'm a Roman Catholic, Ann Eliza."

"Evelina--oh, Evelina Bunner! A Roman Catholic--YOU? Oh, Evelina, did HE
make you?"

Evelina shook her head. "I guess he didn't have no religion; he never
spoke of it. But you see Mrs. Hochmuller was a Catholic, and so when I
was sick she got the doctor to send me to a Roman Catholic hospital,
and the sisters was so good to me there--and the priest used to come and
talk to me; and the things he said kep' me from going crazy. He seemed
to make everything easier."

"Oh, sister, how could you?" Ann Eliza wailed. She knew little of the
Catholic religion except that "Papists" believed in it--in itself a
sufficient indictment. Her spiritual rebellion had not freed her from
the formal part of her religious belief, and apostasy had always seemed
to her one of the sins from which the pure in mind avert their thoughts.

"And then when the baby was born," Evelina continued, "he christened it
right away, so it could go to heaven; and after that, you see, I had to
be a Catholic."

"I don't see--"

"Don't I have to be where the baby is? I couldn't ever ha' gone there if
I