stood up before him where he sat, and made reverence and said:
“The fairies were to go if they showed themselves to people again,
is it not so?”
“Yes, that was it, dear.”
“If a man comes prying into a person’s room at midnight when that
person is half-naked, will you be so unjust as to say that that
person is showing himself to that man?”
“Well–no.” The good priest looked a little troubled and uneasy
when he said it.
“Is a sin a sin, anyway, even if one did not intend to commit it?”
PЉre Fronte threw up his hands and cried out:
“Oh, my poor little child, I see all my fault,” and he drew here to
his side and put an arm around her and tried to make his peace
with her, but her temper was up so high that she could not get it
down right away, but buried her head against his breast and broke
out crying and said:
“Then the fairies committed no sin, for there was no intention to
commit one, they not knowing that any one was by; and because
they were little creatures and could not speak for themselves and
say the saw was against the intention, not against the innocent act,
because they had no friend to think that simple thing for them and
say it, they have been sent away from their home forever, and it
was wrong, wrong to do it!”
The good father hugged her yet closer to his side and said:
“Oh, out of the mouths of babes and sucklings the heedless and
unthinking are condemned; would God I could bring the little
creatures back, for your sake. And mine, yes, and mine; for I have
been unjust. There, there, don’t cry–nobody could be sorrier than
your poor old friend–don’t cry, dear.”
“But I can’t stop right away, I’ve got to. And it is no little matter,
this thing that you have done. Is being sorry penance enough for
such an act?”
PЉre Fronte turned away his face, for it would have hurt her to see
him laugh, and said:
“Oh, thou remorseless but most just accuser, no, it is not. I will put
on sackcloth and ashes; there–are you satisfied?”
Joan’s sobs began to diminish, and she presently looked up at the
old man through her tears, and said, in her simple way:
“Yes, that will do–if it will clear you.”
PЉre Fronte would have been moved to laugh again, perhaps, if he
had not remembered in time that he had made a contract, and not a
very agreeable one. It must be fulfilled. So he got up and went to
the fireplace, Joan watching him with deep interest, and took a
shovelful of cold ashes, and was going to empty them on his old
gray head when a better idea came to him, and he said:
“Would you mind helping me, dear?”
“How, father?”
He got down on his knees and bent his head low, and said:
“Take the ashes and put them on my head for me.”
The matter ended there, of course. The victory was with the priest.
One can imagine how the idea of such a profanation would strike
Joan or any other child in the village. She ran and dropped upon
her knees by his side and said:
“Oh, it is dreadful. I didn’t know that that was what one meant by
sackcloth and ashes–do please get up, father.”
“But I can’t until I am forgiven. Do you forgive me?”
“I? Oh, you have done nothing to me, father; it is yourself that
must forgive yourself for wronging those poor things. Please get
up, gather, won’t you?”
“But I am worse off now than I was before. I thought I was earning
your forgiveness, but if it is my own, I can’t be lenient; it would not
become me. Now what can I do? Find me some way out of this
with your wise little head.”
The PЉre would not stir, for all Joan’s pleadings. She was about to
cry again; then she had an idea, and seized the shovel and deluged
her own head with the ashes, stammering out through her chokings