hadn't been made a Catholic. Don't you understand that?"

Ann Eliza sat speechless, drawing her hand away. Once more she
found herself shut out of Evelina's heart, an exile from her closest
affections.

"I've got to go where the baby is," Evelina feverishly insisted.

Ann Eliza could think of nothing to say; she could only feel that
Evelina was dying, and dying as a stranger in her arms. Ramy and the
day-old baby had parted her forever from her sister.

Evelina began again. "If I get worse I want you to send for a priest.
Miss Mellins'll know where to send--she's got an aunt that's a Catholic.
Promise me faithful you will."

"I promise," said Ann Eliza.

After that they spoke no more of the matter; but Ann Eliza now
understood that the little black bag about her sister's neck, which
she had innocently taken for a memento of Ramy, was some kind of
sacrilegious amulet, and her fingers shrank from its contact when she
bathed and dressed Evelina. It seemed to her the diabolical instrument
of their estrangement.

XIII

Spring had really come at last. There were leaves on the ailanthus-tree
that Evelina could see from her bed, gentle clouds floated over it in
the blue, and now and then the cry of a flower-seller sounded from the
street.

One day there was a shy knock on the back-room door, and Johnny Hawkins
came in with two yellow jonquils in his fist. He was getting bigger and
squarer, and his round freckled face was growing into a smaller copy of
his father's. He walked up to Evelina and held out the flowers.

"They blew off the cart and the fellow said I could keep 'em. But you
can have 'em," he announced.

Ann Eliza rose from her seat at the sewing-machine and tried to take the
flowers from him.

"They ain't for you; they're for her," he sturdily objected; and Evelina
held out her hand for the jonquils.

After Johnny had gone she lay and looked at them without speaking. Ann
Eliza, who had gone back to the machine, bent her head over the seam she
was stitching; the click, click, click of the machine sounded in her ear
like the tick of Ramy's clock, and it seemed to her that life had gone
backward, and that Evelina, radiant and foolish, had just come into the
room with the yellow flowers in her hand.

When at last she ventured to look up, she saw that her sister's head
had drooped against the pillow, and that she was sleeping quietly. Her
relaxed hand still held the jonquils, but it was evident t