And she began to cry, the tears running down her cheeks and wetting
the linen about her, and she began to moan, 'I want my baby--oh,
bring me my little baby that I have never seen yet. I want to say
"good-bye" to it, for I shall never go where it is going.'

And father said, 'Bring her the child.'

I had dressed the poor little thing--a pretty boy, and would have
been a fine man--in one of the gowns I had taken a pleasure in
sewing for it to wear, and the little cap with the crimped border
that had been Ellen's own when she was a baby and her mother's
pride, and I brought it and put it in her arms, and it was clay-cold
in my hands as I carried it. And she laid its head on her breast as
well as she could for her weakness; and father, who was leaning over
her, nigh mad with love and being so anxious about her, he says--

'Let Lucy take the poor little thing away, Ellen,' he says, 'for you
must try to get well and strong for the sake of those that love
you.'

Then she says, turning her eyes on him, shining like stars out of
her pale face, and still holding her baby tight to her breast, 'I
know what's the best thing I can do for them as love me, and I'm
doing it fast. Kiss me, father, and kiss the baby too. Perhaps if I
hold it tight we'll go out into the dark together, and God won't
have the heart to part us.' And so she died.

And there was no one but me that touched her after she died, for all
I am a cripple, and I laid her out, my pretty, with my own hands,
and the baby in the hollow of her arm; and I put primroses all round