"You haven't got on enough," said her mother, still in her natural
voice.

"I've got on my wrapper."

"That isn't enough, getting up right out of bed so. Go and get my
white crocheted shawl out of the closet and put it over your
shoulders."

Maria obeyed. While she was doing so her mother resumed her cries.
She said the first half of the twenty-third psalm, then she looked
again at Maria seating herself beside her, and said, in her own
voice, wrested as it were by love from the very depths of mortal
agony. "Have you got your stockings on?" said she.

"Yes, ma'am, and my slippers."

Her mother said no more to her. She resumed her attention to her own
misery with an odd, small gesture of despair. The cries never ceased.
Maria still prayed. It seemed to her that her father would never
return with the doctor. It seemed to her, in spite of her prayer,
that all hope of relief lay in the doctor, and not in the Lord. It
seemed to her that the doctor must help her mother. At last she heard
wheels, and, in her joy, she spoke in spite of her father's
injunction. "There's the doctor now," said she. "I guess he's
bringing father home with him."

Again her mother's eyes opened with a look of intelligence, again she
spoke in her natural voice. She looked towards the clothes which she
had worn during the day, on a chair. "Put my clothes in the closet,"