uld care to hold Mrs. Flippin's hand.
But there was a motherliness about Mrs. Flippin, a quality with which
Madge had never before come closely in contact. "It is like the way I
used to feel when I was a little girl and said my prayers at night," she
told herself.

Madge did not say her prayers now. Nobody did, apparently. She thought
it rather a pity. It was a comfortable thing to do. And it meant a great
deal if you only believed in it.

"Do you say your prayers, Mrs. Flippin?" she asked suddenly.

Mrs. Flippin was getting used to Madge's queer questions. She treated
them as a missionary might treat the questions of a beautiful and
appealing savage, who having gone with him to some strange country was
constantly interrogatory.

"She don't seem to know anything about the things we do," Mrs. Flippin
told her husband. "She got the nurse to wheel her out into the kitchen
this afternoon, and watched me frost a cake and cut out biscuits. And
she says that she has never seen anything so sociable as the teakettle,
the way it rocks and sings."

So now when Madge asked Mrs. Flippin if she said her prayers, Mrs.
Flippin said, "Do you mean at night?"

"Yes."

"Bob and I say them together," said Mrs. Flippin. "We started on our
wedding night, and we ain't ever stopped."

It was a simple statement of a sublime fact. For thirty years this plain
man and this plain woman had kept alive the spiritual flame on the
household altar. No wonder that peace was under this roof and serenity.

Madge, as she lay there holding Mrs. Flippin's hand, looked very young,
almost like a little girl. Her hair was parted and the burnished braids
lay heavy on her lovely neck. Her thin fine gown left her arms bare.
"Mrs. Flippin," she said, "I wish I could live here always, and have you
come every night and sit and hold my hand."

Her eyes were smiling and Mrs. Flippin smiled back. "You'd get tired."

"No," said Madge, "I don't believe anybody ever gets tired of goodness.
Not real goodness. The kind that isn't hypocritical or priggish. And in
these days it is so rare, that one just loves it. I am bored to death
with near-bad people, Mrs. Flippin, and near-good ones. I'd much rather
have them real saints and real sinners."

The nurse came in just then, and Mrs. Flippin went away. And after a
time the house was very still. Madge's bed was close to the window.
Outside innumerable fireflies studded the night with gold. Now and then
a screech-owl