per, and then you'll come up and sit beside your mother for a whiley, for soon you'll be putting her away in the kirk-yard."
I hear such a little cry from near the door.
So my mother and I go up the stair together.
"We have changed places," she says; "that was just how I used to help you up, but I'm the bairn now."
She brings out the Testament again; it was always lying within reach; it is the lock of hair she left me when she died. And when she has read for a long time she "gives me a look," as we say in the north, and I go out, to leave her alone with God. She had been but a child when her mother died, and so she fell early into the way of saying her prayers with no earthly listener. Often and often I have found her on her knees, but I always went softly away, closing the door. I never heard her pray, but I know very well how she prayed, and that, when that door was shut, there was not a day in God's sight between the worn woman and the little child.
