,--nor even to think, if you can help it. You know the
doctor does not want you to talk."

"All right. I won't talk. A going clock may be always wrong, but a
stopped clock is right twice a day. So stop your tongue, and avoid
folly. My uncle told me that. He never talks."

"And now shall you and I imitate his example?" proposed Maria Dolores.
Her lips, compressed, were plainly the gaolers of a laugh.

"Yes," said Annunziata. "But I can't help thinking of those poor
flowers. All May flowers are born to be put on the Lady Altar. Those
poor flowers are missing what they were born for. They must be very
sad."

"This afternoon, every afternoon," Maria Dolores promised, "I will put
flowers on the Lady Altar. Now see if you can't shut your eyes, and rest
for a little while."

"I once found a toad on the Lady Altar. What do you think he was there
for?" asked Annunziata.

"I can't think, I'm sure," said Maria Dolores.

"Well, when I first saw him I was angry, and I was going to get a broom
and sweep him away. But then I thought it must be very hard to be a
toad, and that you can't help being a toad if you are born one, and I
thought that perhaps that toad was there praying that he might be
changed from a toad to something else. So I didn't sweep him away. Have
you ever heard of the little Mass of Corruption that lay in a garden?"

"No," said Maria Dolores.

"Well," said Annunziata, "once upon a time a little Mass of Corruption
lay in a garden. But it did not know it was a Mass of Corruption, and it
did not wish to be a Mass of Corruption, and it never did any harm or
wished any harm to any one, but just lay there all day long, and thought
how beautiful the sky was, and how good and warm the sun, and how sweet
the flowers were and the bird-songs, and thanked God with all its heart
for having given it such a lovely place to lie in. Yet all the while,
you know, it couldn't help being what it was, a little Mass of
Corruption. And at the close of the day some people who were walking in
the garden saw it, and cried out, 'Oh, what a horrible little Mass of
Corruption!' and they called the gardener, and had it buried in the
earth. But the little Mass of Corruption, when it heard that it _was_ a
little Mass of Corruption, felt very, very sad, and it made a
supplication to Our Lady. 'I do not wish to be a Mass of Corruption,' it
said. 'Queen of Heaven, pray for me, that I may be purified, and made
clean, and not be a Mass of Cor