s her with that need of tender expansion, that
habit of professional affection which had made them kiss the ducks in
the railway carriage.

They each of them took her on their knees, stroked her soft, light hair
and pressed her in their arms with vehement and spontaneous outbursts of
affection, and the child, who was very good and religious, bore it all
patiently.

As the day had been a fatiguing one for everybody, they all went to
bed soon after dinner. The whole village was wrapped in that perfect
stillness of the country, which is almost like a religious silence,
and the girls, who were accustomed to the noisy evenings of their
establishment, felt rather impressed by the perfect repose of the
sleeping village, and they shivered, not with cold, but with those
little shivers of loneliness which come over uneasy and troubled hearts.

As soon as they were in bed, two and two together, they clasped each
other in their arms, as if to protect themselves against this feeling of
the calm and profound slumber of the earth. But Rosa, who was alone in
her little dark cupboard, felt a vague and painful emotion come over
her.

She was tossing about in bed, unable to get to sleep, when she heard the
faint sobs of a crying child close to her head, through the partition.
She was frightened, and called out, and was answered by a weak voice,
broken by sobs. It was the little girl, who was always used to sleeping
in her mother's room, and who was afraid in her small attic.

Rosa was delighted, got up softly so as not to awaken any one, and went
and fetched the child. She took her into her warm bed, kissed her
and pressed her to her bosom, lavished exaggerated manifestations of
tenderness on her, and at last grew calmer herself and went to sleep.
And till morning the candidate for confirmation slept with her head on
Rosa's bosom.

At five o'clock the little church bell, ringing the Angelus, woke the
women, who usually slept the whole morning long.

The villagers were up already, and the women went busily from house to
house, carefully bringing short, starched muslin dresses or very long
wax tapers tied in the middle with a bow of silk fringed with gold, and
with dents in the wax for the fingers.

The sun was already high in the blue sky, which still had a rosy tint
toward the horizon, like a faint remaining trace of dawn. Families of
fowls were walking about outside the houses, and here and there a black
cock, with a glistening