The intruding relative, discerning her, stopped and smiled.  And the smile was as a banderilla to her niece’s goaded spirit.

“Jiminy!” gasped that young person, “she’s got a smile just like a teacher.”

“Mary, dear,” the intruder gushed, “God has sent you something.”

The hickory flashed forth black and white and red.  Mary stood upon the ground.

“Where are they?” she demanded.

“They?” repeated the lady.  “There is only one.”

“Why, I prayed for two.  Which did he send?”

“Which do you think?” parried the lady.  “Which do you hope it is?”

Even Mary’s scorn was unprepared for this weak-mindedness.  “The goat, of course,” she responded curtly.  “Is it the goat?”

“Goat!” gasped the scandalized aunt.  “Goat!  Why, God has sent you a baby sister, dear.”

“A sister! a baby!” gasped Mary in her turn.  “I don’t need no sister.  I prayed for a goat just as plain as plain.  ‘Dear God,’ I says, ’please bless everybody, and make me a good girl, an’ send me a goat an’ wagon.’  And they went an’ changed it to a baby sister!  Why, I never s’posed they made mistakes like that.”

Crestfallen and puzzled she allowed herself to be led back to the darkened house where her grandmother met her with the heavenly substitute wrapped in flannel.  And as she held it against the square and unresponsive bosom of her apron she realized how the “Bible gentleman” must have felt when he asked for bread and was given a stone.

During the weeks that followed, the weight of the stone grew heavier and heavier while the hunger for bread grew daily more acute.  Not even the departure of interfering relatives could bring freedom, for the baby’s stumpy arms bound Mary to the house as inexorably as bolts and bars could have done.  She passed weary hours in a hushed room watching the baby, when outside the sun was shining, the birds calling, the apples waxing greener and larger, and the shining knights and ladies winding down to Camelot.  She sat upon the porch, still beside the baby, while the river rippled, the wheatfields wimpled, and the cows came trailing down from the pasture, down from the upland pasture where the sentinel hickory stood and watched until the sun went down, and, one by one, the lights came out in distant Camelot.  She listened for the light laughter of the ladies, the jingling of the golden armor, the swishing of the branches and of the waves.  Listened all in vain, for Theodora, that gift of God, had powerful lungs and a passion for exercising them so that minor sounds were overwhelmed and only yells remained.