Sometimes both voices came to a pause through emotion. He remembered the other scene in the stuffy little room, and could see Bess’s enraptured face.
Then Dilsey Quinn gave a little start, and raised her head, turning her eyes to him.
“I c’n understand it all now,” she said joyously. “The Lord Jesus wanted me to wait till you come back, so I could tell Bess. An’, Miss Virginia, she’ll be so glad to know who gave the wild roses to Patsey. An’ you promised her—you’d come. We was all goin’ to heaven—together—”
The head dropped. The heart was still. The labor of the hands was done. The slow brain had the wisdom of the stars. But her eyes still kept the subtle glory; a radiance not of this world shone in her face as she left the night behind her and stepped into the dawn of everlasting life.
Then John Travis laid her reverently on the cot, and sprinkled a baptism of roses over her. The two left behind, clasped hands, their whole lives sanctified by the brave sweetness and devotion of this one gone up to God.
No one told the “little mothers” that one of their number lay up-stairs in Miss Mary’s room waxen white and still in her last sleep. They sang and played and ran and shouted, perhaps jangled as well. Death often met them in the byways of the slums, but in this land of enchantment they were not looking for it. Their holidays were brief enough; their days of toil and deprivation stretched out interminably. How could they sorrow for this pale, quiet little girl who had not even played with them?
In the afternoon John Travis brought up Patsey and Owen, who were stunned by the unlooked-for tidings. Dil had on her white frock, Patsey’s gift, that had been both pride and pleasure to him.
Owen looked at her steadily and in great awe, winking hard to keep back the tears. Patsey wiped his away with his coat-sleeve.
“Ther’ wasn’t ever no girl like Dil Quinn,” he said brokenly. “She was good as gold through and through. Nobody never loved any one as she loved Bess. Seems like she couldn’t live a’thout her. O mister, do you think ther’s railly a heaven as they preach ’bout? Fer if ther’ is, Dilly Quinn an’ Bess are angels, sure as sure. An’ Owen, we’ve got to be tip top, jes’ ’s if she was watchin’ us all the time. But it’s norful to think she can’t never come down home to us.”