Connolly. It
was Saturday, and things must be made ready for the services the next
day. Jean had been taught as a child to kneel reverently while Mrs.
Connolly prayed. To sit quietly in a pew while her good friend did the
little offices of the altar.
Jean had always loved to sit there, to wonder about the rows of candles
and the crucifix, to wonder about the Sacred Heart, and St. Agnes with
the lamb, and St. Anthony who found things when you lost them, and St.
Francis in the brown frock with the rope about his waist, and why Mrs.
Connolly never touched any of the sacred vessels with bare hands.
But most of all she had wondered about that benignant figure in the
pale blue garments who stood in a niche, with a light burning at her
feet, and with a baby in her arms.
_Mary_--
Faintly as she gazed upon it on this winter morning, Jean began to
perceive the meaning of that figure. Of late many women had said to
her, "Was my son born for this, to be torn from my arms--to be
butchered?"
Well, Mary's son had been torn from her arms--butchered--her little son
who had lain in a manger and whom she had loved as much as any
less-worshipped mother,--and he had told the world what he thought of
sin and injustice and cruelty, and the world had hated him because he
had set himself against these things--and they had killed him, and from
his death had come the regeneration of mankind.
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