III

The tired mother with the "weeny baby" on her arm lay on a long
carpenter's bench, her earthly journey over, and when Rebecca
stole in and placed the flowery garland all along the edge of the
rude bier, death suddenly took on a more gracious and benign
aspect. It was only a child's sympathy and intuition that
softened the rigors of the sad moment, but poor, wild Sal
Winslow, in her frame of daisies, looked as if she were missed a
little by an unfriendly world; while the weeny baby, whose heart
had fallen asleep almost as soon as it had learned to beat, the
weeny baby, with Emma Jane's nosegay of buttercups in its tiny
wrinkled hand, smiled as if it might have been loved and longed
for and mourned.

"We've done all we can now without a minister," whispered
Rebecca. "We could sing, God is ever good' out of the Sunday
school song book, but I'm afraid somebody would hear us and think
we were gay and happy. What's that?"

A strange sound broke the stillness; a gurgle, a yawn, a merry
little call. The two girls ran in the direction from which it
came, and there, on an old coat, in a clump of goldenrod bushes,
lay a child just waking from a refreshing nap.

"It's the other baby that Lizy Ann Dennett told about!" cried
Emma Jane.