And Sister Angela and Sister Theckla came into the room and they said: "See, now, what you have done to the windows!"

Sure enough, when the little girls looked at the windows the gla.s.s was all dim and blurred with little damp finger-prints!

It was one day as the sun shone as it did shine most days, that the same little girl who knew how to sing that song when it rained was running on the sh.e.l.l-bordered walk, holding Bessie Bell's hand and running, when her little foot tripped up against Bessie Bell's foot,--and over Bessie Bell rolled on the walk with the sh.e.l.l border.

Then Bessie Bell cried and cried.

And Sister Mary Felice said: "Bessie Bell, where are you hurt?"

Bessie Bell did not know where she was hurt: she only knew that she was so sorry to have been so happy to be running, and then to roll so suddenly on the walk.

Then the little girl said: "She isn't hurt at all. She is just crying."

Sister Mary Felice said: "But you threw her down. You must tell her you are sorry."

Then the little girl said: "But I didn't mean to throw her down."

"But," Sister Mary Felice said, "you did trip her up, and you must beg her pardon."

Then Sister Theckla came to take all the little girls to the room where so many chairs sat in so many rows, and she too said: "Yes, you must beg her pardon."

Bessie Bell was listening so that she had almost stopped crying, but now when Sister Story Felice and Sister Theckla both said to the little girl, "Yes, you must beg pardon," then the little girl began to cry, too.

Then Bessie Bell grew so sorry again, she hardly knew why, or for what, that she began to cry again.

So then both Sisters said again: "Yes, you should beg pardon."

But the little girl still cried, and said, "But I didn't mean to trip her." Then she shook her head at Bessie Bell and said--because she just had to say it:

"I beg your pardon!

Grant me grace!

I hope the cat will scratch your face!"

Oh! Sister Mary Felice looked at Sister Theckla, and Sister Theckla looked at Sister Mary Felice--and they both said: "Where did she learn that?"

But Bessie Bell knew that the little girl did not mean to throw her down, so she said, "No, you didn't mean to do it."

She had thought she ought to say that, and she had been getting ready to say that before the little girl had been made to beg her pardon, and now that she had gotten ready she said: "No, you didn't mean to do it."

Then the little girl stopped crying, too, and ran and caught Bessie Bell's hand again and said to her again:

"I beg your pardon!

Grant me grace!

I hope the cat won't scratch your face!"

So they went skipping down the walk together just as they had gone before. Then Sister Mary Felice and Sister Theckla both said: "Well!

Well!"

One time it came about that Bessie Bell lay a long time in her little white crib-bed, and she did not know why, and she did not care much why. She did not get up and play in the sand while Sister Mary Felice looked one hour at the little girls playing in the sand.

She scarcely wondered why she did not leave the crib-bed to sit on the long gallery-step in a row with all the other little girls, all with their feet on the gravel, and all eating the tiny cakes that Sister Ignatius made, while Sister Angela sat on the bench under the magnolia-tree and looked at the row of little girls.

If sometimes just at waking from fitful sleep in her crib-bed there came to her just a thought, or a remembrance, of a great big soft white cat that reached its paw out and softly touched her cheek, it came to her only like the touch of fancy in a big soft white dream.

Often Only-Just-Ladies came and talked over her little white crib with Sister Helen Vincula.

Bessie Bell's little fingers were no longer pink and round now; they lay just white, so white and small, on the white spread. And Bessie Bell did not mind how quiet she was told to be, for she was too tired to want to make any noise at all.

One day it happened that an Only-Just-Lady came and said: "Sister Helen Vincula, I want to give you a ticket to carry you away to the high mountain, and I want you to go to stay a month in my house on the mountain, and I want you to carry this little sick girl with you. And when you are there, Sister Helen Vincula, my bread-man will bring you bread, and my milk-man will bring you milk, and my market-man from the cove will bring you apples and eggs, and all the rest of the good things that come up the mountain from the warm caves."

"For," the Only-Just-Lady said, "I want this little sick girl to grow well again, and I want her little arms and legs and fingers to get round and pink again."

Bessie Bell thought that that was a very pretty tale that the Lady was telling, but she did not know or understand that that tale was about her. Then the Only-Just-Lady said, "Sister Helen Vincula, it will do you good, too, as well as this little girl to stay in the high mountains."

Not until all of Bessie Bell's little blue checked ap.r.o.ns, and all of her little blue dresses, and all of her little white petticoats, and all of her little white night-gowns, and even the tiny old night-gown with the linen thread name worked on it, had been put with all the rest of her small belongings into the old trunk with bra.s.s tacks in the leather, the old, old trunk that had belonged to Sister Helen Vincula, did Bessie Bell know that it was herself, little Bessie Bell, who was going away Somewhere.

It was a very strange new world to Bessie Bell, that new world up on the High Mountain.

She did not think the grand views off the edge of the high mountain so strange. But she loved to look out on those views as she stood by Sister Helen Vincula on the gray cliff; Sister Helen Vincula holding her hand very fast while they both looked down into the valleys and coves. As the shadows of evening crept up to the cliff whereon they stood, and as those shadows folded round and round the points and coves, those points and caves lying below and beyond fold over fold, everything grew purple and violet.

Everything grew so purple, and so violet, and so great, and so wide that it seemed sometimes to the little girl, standing on the cliff by Sister Helen Vincula, that she was looking right down into the heart of a violet as great, as wide--as great, as wide--as the whole world.

But this did not seem so strange to Bessie Bell, for she yet remembered that window out of which one could see just small, green, moving things, and of which great grown people had told her, "No, Bessie Bell, there is no such window in all the world."

So in her own way she thought that maybe after awhile that the big, big violet might drift away, away, and great grown people might say, "No, Bessie Bell, there never was a violet in all the world like that."

It was the people--and all the people--of that new world that seemed so strange to Bessie Bell.

There were children, and children in all the summer cabins on that high mountain.

And those children did not walk in rows.

And those children did not do things by one hours.