“Yes,” answered Miss Deering with a faint flush.
“She will live till then. If, she suffers we must try opiates, but we will hardly need, I think.”
“She will not get excited. She is strangely tranquil. Do not disturb her serene hope, whatever it is.”
The day drew to a close again. Dil asked if she was not going to her own bed, and seemed quite content. Miss Mary came in early in the evening and sent Virginia to bed. She could not quite believe the dread fiat. For Dil might be made so happy in the years to come. Ah, God, must it be too late? It seemed like the refinement of cruelty.
She came back about midnight, but Miss Mary motioned her away, and then went out in the hall.
“You must go to bed in earnest,” she said. “You may be needed more later on. She is very quiet; but she lies there with her eyes wide open, as if she were seeing visions. I get a nap now and then; you see, I’m used to this kind of work.”
“I wish ’twas mornin’,” Dil said toward early dawn. “I want to hear the birds sing an’ the children playin’; they do laugh so glad an’ comfortin’. An’ I wisht there could be some babies tumblin’ round in the sweet grass. They’d like it so. Don’t you _never_ have any babies?”
“There are other homes for babies,” was the reply.
“Do you s’pose it’ll ever get all round,—homes, an’ care, an’ joy, an’ such? There’s so many, you know. There was little girls in Barker’s Court who had to sew, an’ never could go out, not even Sundays. When ’twas nice, Bess an’ me used to go out on Sat’days. But the winter froze her all up. And the other poor children—”
“But I don’t feel sleepy,” and Dil’s face was sweet with her serene smile. “There’s so many lovely things to think about.”
Dilsey shut her eyes and lay very still. Was there some mysterious change in the face?
And so dawned another morning. Virginia Deering came in with a handful of flowers, which she laid beside Dilsey’s cheek on the pillow.
“Oh,” the child began in a breathless sort of way, “do you think he’ll be here to-morrow, Sat’day? Cause I don’t b’l’eve I’d be well ’nuff to go down. I don’t seem to get reel rested like. An’ you’ll have to send word to Patsey. He wanted me to stay a good long while, an’ get fat, an’ I want to try.”