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Pull yourself together right away. Get her some water, nurse, she has stood all she can. There now, dearie " Ruth's head was on her breast now. "There there Such a poor darling, and so many things coming all at once. There, darling, put your head on my shoulder and cry it all out." The girl sobbed on, the wrinkled hand patting her cheek. "Oh, but you don't know, aunty " she crooned.

She cooked, baked, swept, washed supper-cloths, with the triumph of a chemist in a new laboratory. To her the hearth was veritably the altar. When she went shopping she hugged the cans of soup, and she bought a mop or a side of bacon as though she were preparing for a reception. She knelt beside a bean sprout and crooned, "I raised this with my own hands I brought this new life into the world."

By its hum in winter twilights, a hundred years ago, soft lullabies were crooned, and fine linen spun for dainty brides, over whose forgotten graves the blossoms of a century of summers have fallen. In hoop and farthingale they tripped over the threshold of the old church of Notre Dame de Bonsecours.

Mary covered her eyes with her hands. The Sparrow sat petrified. The little Elliston, terrified by their strange aspects, burst into loud wails. "There, darling; there, mother's boy," crooned Mary soothingly, pressing her wet cheek to his. "Little bairns like that, Mary," McEwan repeated brokenly. Mary gathered the child close into her arms. They sat in stunned horror.

"Puir thing," she wailed and crooned, again breaking out after having kissed and fondled Mysie's wet face. "We hae lang hungered for you hungered for you for a gey lang time, an' noo you hae cam' hame, near to daith's door. But we'll nurse you back. We'll mak' you strong and healthy again. Oh, Mysie, my puir lassie. What ails you? Where hae you been? What has happened to you a' this time?

To go back a little, for several days after his child's birth Major Carteret's chief interest in life had been confined to the four walls of the chamber where his pale wife lay upon her bed of pain, and those of the adjoining room where an old black woman crooned lovingly over a little white infant.

Nine years she sat; and the sea beat upon the terrace, and the gulls cried about the turrets, and wind crooned in the chimneys of the house. Nine years she came not abroad, nor tasted the clean air, neither saw God's sky. Nine years she sat and looked neither to the right nor to the left, nor heard speech of any one, but thought upon the thought of the morrow.

Yer lips be that blue and yer mouth air like a baby-bird's.... Eat, I says, damn ye.... Will ye swallow that?" She held the withered lips open, and filled the cavity with warm milk. "Eat, I says," crooned the girl; "eat, and Tess takes ye tight like this and the rats can't bite ye, or the ghosts get ye till ye air dead. Tess loves ye, ye poor little brat."

From the brow of cemetery hill the country below rose from velvety blackness of complete night to a gray sky that was somehow comforting and friendly. Through it, far down the road toward Blue Hill, the street lamps glowed yellow through the gloom, showing the route to the invisible hill. The wind crooned in the pines, and the swish of sheeted rain seemed a lullaby.

It had cost Everett ten francs. To the wood-boy it meant a year's wages. The boy hugged it in his arms, as he might a baby, and crooned over it. From under the blood-stained bandage, humbly, without resentment, he lifted his tired eyes to those of the white man. Still, dumbly, they begged the answer to the same question.