d
[undefiled, innocent] dove as thou art, canst not even conceive! God is
good to saints--not to sinners. Sister Christian--and thou, yet!--be
amongst the saints. I am of the sinners."

"But why art thou not a saint, Mother?" demanded the child, as
innocently as before.

"I was on the road once," said the woman, with a heavy sigh. "I was to
have been an holy sister of Saint Clare. I knew no more of ill than
thou whiteling in mine arms. If I had died then, when my soul was
fair!"

Suddenly her mood changed. She clasped the child close to her breast,
and showered kisses on the little wan face.

"My babe Maude, my bird Maude!" she said. "My dove that God sped down
from Heaven unto me, thinking me not too ill ne wicked to have thee!
The angels may love thee, my bird in bower! for thou art white and
unwemmed. The robes of thy chrism [see Note 1] are not yet soiled; but,
O sinner that I am! how am I to meet God? And I must meet Him--and
soon."

"Did not God die on the rood, Mother?"

The woman assented, the old listless tone returning to her voice.

"Wherefore, Mother?"

"God wot, child."

"Sister Christian told me He had no need for Himself, but that He loved
us; yet why that should cause Him to die I wis not."

The mother made no answer. Her thoughts had drifted away, back through
her weary past, to a little village church where a fresco painting stood
on the wall, sketched in days long before, of a company of guests at a
feast, clad in Saxon robes; and of One, behind whom knelt a woman
weeping and kissing His feet, while her flowing hair almost hid them
from sight. And back to her memory, along with the scene, came a line
from a popular ballad ["The Ploughman's Complaint"] which referred to
it. She repeated it aloud--

"`Christ suffered a sinful to kisse His fete.'

"Suffered her, for that she was a saint?" she asked of herself, in the
dreamy languor which the intense cold had brought over her. "Nay, for
she was `a sinful.' Suffered her, then, for that she sinned? Were not
that to impeach His holiness? Or was He so holy and high that no sin of
hers could soil the feet she touched? What good did it her to touch
them? Made it her holy?--fit to meet God in the Doom [Judgment], when
she had thus met Him here in His lowliness? How wis I? And could it
make me fit to meet Him? But I can never kiss His feet. Nor lack they
the ournment [adornment] of any kiss of mine. Yet methinks it were s