“There’s one thing we can do,” said Cecily gently.  “We can pray for him.”

“So we can,” I agreed.

“I’m going to pray like sixty,” said Felix energetically.

“We’ll have to be awful good, you know,” warned Cecily.  “There’s no use praying if you’re not good.”

“That will be easy,” sighed Felicity.  “I don’t feel a bit like being bad.  If anything happens to Peter I feel sure I’ll never be naughty again.  I won’t have the heart.”

We did, indeed, pray most sincerely for Peter’s recovery.  We did not, as in the case of Paddy, “tack it on after more important things,” but put it in the very forefront of our petitions.  Even skeptical Dan prayed, his skepticism falling away from him like a discarded garment in this valley of the shadow, which sifts out hearts and tries souls, until we all, grown-up or children, realize our weakness, and, finding that our own puny strength is as a reed shaken in the wind, creep back humbly to the God we have vainly dreamed we could do without.

Peter was no better the next day.  Aunt Olivia reported that his mother was broken-hearted.  We did not again ask to be released from work.  Instead, we went at it with feverish zeal.  If we worked hard there was less time for grief and grievious thoughts.  We picked apples and dragged them to the granary doggedly.  In the afternoon Aunt Janet brought us a lunch of apple turnovers; but we could not eat them.  Peter, as Felicity reminded us with a burst of tears, had been so fond of apple turnovers.

And, oh, how good we were!  How angelically and unnaturally good!  Never was there such a band of kind, sweet-tempered, unselfish children in any orchard.  Even Felicity and Dan, for once in their lives, got through the day without any exchange of left-handed compliments.  Cecily confided to me that she never meant to put her hair up in curlers on Saturday nights again, because it was pretending.  She was so anxious to repent of something, sweet girl, and this was all she could think of.

During the afternoon Judy Pineau brought up a tear-blotted note from Sara Ray.  Sara had not been allowed to visit the hill farm since Peter had developed measles.  She was an unhappy little exile, and could only relieve her anguish of soul by daily letters to Cecily, which the faithful and obliging Judy Pineau brought up for her.  These epistles were as gushingly underlined as if Sara had been a correspondent of early Victorian days.

Cecily did not write back, because Mrs. Ray had decreed that no letters must be taken down from the hill farm lest they carry infection.  Cecily had offered to bake every epistle thoroughly in the oven before sending it; but Mrs. Ray was inexorable, and Cecily had to content herself by sending long verbal messages with Judy Pineau.