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 Ange