som!

"_They_ seed her," repeated the little fellow. "And that is why you
stand here--to see her, too?"

His shoulder turned uneasily in the clasp upon it.

"They seed her, and they ain't got no eyes."

"Have you no mother?"

"Ain't never had no mother." A thought struck him. "Would that count,
ma'am? Would that count? The little baby that was dying--yes, ma'am,
it had a mother; and it's the mothers that come here constant with
their children; I sometimes hear 'em dragging them in by the hand."

"How long have you been coming here?"

"Ever since the first time I heard it, ma'am."

Street ragamuffins do not cry: it would be better if they did so, when
they are so young and so blind; it would be easier for the spectator,
the auditor.

"They seed her--I might see her ef--ef I could see her once--ef--ef
I could see anything once." His voice faltered; but he stiffened it
instantly. "She might see me. She can't pass through this gate without
seeing me; and--and--ef she seed me--and I didn't even see her--oh,
I'm so tired of being blind!"

"Did you never go inside to pray?" How embarrassing such a question
is, even to a child!

"No, ma'am. Does that count, too? The little baby didn't pray, the
flowers didn't go inside, nor the birds. And they say the birds broke
out singing all at once, and the flowers shined, like the sun was
shining on 'em--like the sun was shining in 'em," he corrected
himself. "The birds they can see, and the flowers they can't see, and
they seed her." He shivered with the damp cold--and perhaps too with
hunger.

"Where do you live?"

He wouldn't answer.

"What do you live on?"

He shook his head.

"Come with me." He could not resist the grasp on his shoulder, and the
firm directing of his bare, muddy feet through the gate, up the walk,
and into the chamber which the Virgin found that day. He was turned to
the altar, and pressed down on his knees.

One should not look at the face of a blind child praying to the Virgin
for sight. Only the Virgin herself should see that--and if she once
saw that little boy! There were hearts, feet, hands, and eyes enough
hanging around to warrant hope at least, if not faith; the effigies of
the human aches and pains that had here found relief, if not surcease;
feet and hands beholden to no physician for their exorcism of
rheumatism; eyes and ears indebted to no oculist or aurist; and the
hearts,--they are always in excess,--and, to the most skeptical,