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She stooped over him so closely that their breaths intermingled, as she had done once before, and whispered to him: "Your mammy is here, your mammy is with you." But he made no sign of recognition. Cilia's face was swollen with weeping as she opened the kitchen door in the basement on hearing somebody give a gentle knock.
So she had to let the boy run about. But that he hung on Cilia's arm when she had to go an errand in the evening, that he hurried after her when she only took a letter to the box, or that he brought her a chair when she wanted to sit with her mending-basket under the elderberry bush near the kitchen door was not to be tolerated.
Yes, it was beautiful to be able to kneel like that before the Holy Virgin, who was lovelier than all women on earth, and hardly had you laid your request before her when its fulfilment was insured. Splendid! "Hail Mary!" Cilia's prayer began like that. He did not know any more, but he repeated the words many times.
But when evening came round again and the wind whispered in the pine-trees outside and a ghostly hand tapped at the window ugh, a small white hand as in Cilia's song he lay in bed, shivered with cold in spite of the soft warm blankets, and felt his throat ache and his ears tingle and burn. "He's ill," his mother said very anxiously next morning. "We'll get the doctor to come at once."
He called it out in a very contented voice and nodded down to her; and she saw Cilia's round, healthy, white and red face behind his and heard her friendly laugh. Käte did not know herself how she got over those weeks in which she was separated from her home. It was not so bad as she had imagined.
She emphasised each word; it sounded irrevocable. He still shook his head incredulously: it could not be. But then he suddenly remembered Cilia's depression and her words that evening: "I suppose she's going to give me notice." "No, you shan't do so." He started up in bed. "I shall not ask you." "No, you shan't, you shan't," he cried.
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