“And now shall you and I imitate his example?” proposed Maria Dolores.  Her lips, compressed, were plainly the gaolers of a laugh.

“Yes,” said Annunziata.  “But I can’t help thinking of those poor flowers.  All May flowers are born to be put on the Lady Altar.  Those poor flowers are missing what they were born for.  They must be very sad.”

“This afternoon, every afternoon,” Maria Dolores promised, “I will put flowers on the Lady Altar.  Now see if you can’t shut your eyes, and rest for a little while.”

“I once found a toad on the Lady Altar.  What do you think he was there for?” asked Annunziata.

“I can’t think, I’m sure,” said Maria Dolores.

“Well, when I first saw him I was angry, and I was going to get a broom and sweep him away.  But then I thought it must be very hard to be a toad, and that you can’t help being a toad if you are born one, and I thought that perhaps that toad was there praying that he might be changed from a toad to something else.  So I didn’t sweep him away.  Have you ever heard of the little Mass of Corruption that lay in a garden?”

“No,” said Maria Dolores.

“Well,” said Annunziata, “once upon a time a little Mass of Corruption lay in a garden.  But it did not know it was a Mass of Corruption, and it did not wish to be a Mass of Corruption, and it never did any harm or wished any harm to any one, but just lay there all day long, and thought how beautiful the sky was, and how good and warm the sun, and how sweet the flowers were and the bird-songs, and thanked God with all its heart for having given it such a lovely place to lie in.  Yet all the while, you know, it couldn’t help being what it was, a little Mass of Corruption.  And at the close of the day some people who were walking in the garden saw it, and cried out, ’Oh, what a horrible little Mass of Corruption!’ and they called the gardener, and had it buried in the earth.  But the little Mass of Corruption, when it heard that it was a little Mass of Corruption, felt very, very sad, and it made a supplication to Our Lady.  ‘I do not wish to be a Mass of Corruption,’ it said.  ’Queen of Heaven, pray for me, that I may be purified, and made clean, and not be a Mass of Corruption any longer, and that I may then go back to the garden, out of this dark earth.’  So Our Lady prayed for it, and it was cleansed with water and purified, and—­what do you think the Little Mass of Corruption became?  It became a rose—­a red rose in that very garden, just where they had buried it.  From which we see—­But I don’t quite remember what we see from it,” she broke off the pain of baffled effort on her brow.  “My uncle could tell you that.”

Afterwards, for a few minutes, she was silent, lying quite still, with her eyes on the ceiling.

“Why do sunny lands produce dark people, and dark lands light people?” she asked all at once.

“Ah, don’t begin to talk again, dear,” Maria Dolores pleaded.  “The doctor will he coming soon now, and he will be angry if he finds that I have let you talk.”