PRAYED THEN DIED.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 365, 5 March 1932, Page 22 (Supplement)

PRAYED THEN DIED.

“MISS SUNSHINE’S” TRAGIC END. MOTHER PROSTRATED WITH GRIEF Little Mary Mains was one of the most beautiful children in Blantyre, Scotland, and one of the happiest, always smiling and joyful. For this i*eason she was chosen to take the part of Miss Sunshine in a playlet which was to have been produced by a Brownie pack in a local hall on the last day of the year. When she went to visit her aunt in Burnbank on the day of her death the child chattered happily about the good time in store for her. As she was leaving the bus on her way home from her aunt’s, the little girl was knocked down by a motor lorry. She was carried unconscious into a chemist’s shop, but it was evident that she had sustained grave injuries, and she was rushed to the Royal Infirmary. When the child failed to appear at her home that night Mrs. Mains thought that she was staying the night with her aunt at Burnbank. It was not usual for the girl to stay the night with her aunt without telling her mother beforehand, and Mrs. Mains was a little anxious at first, but not unduly so until the following mprning, when there was still no sign of the little one. During the night the police tried to establish the identity of the dying child, but their efforts were in vain. The first indication that the mother had of the tragedy was when a neighbour learned that an unknown child had been knocked down and injured by a motor lorry in Blantyre. With her alarm now at fever heat, the mother hurried, to the police station. There to her horror she learned that it was her child who lay dying in the infirmary. Mrs. Mains at once set off for Glasgow, and was taken to the bedside of her little <laughter. Suddenly, the child stirred. Opening her eyes, she looked smilingly at her mother. Then little Mary’s lips moved in prayer for a few seconds. When the brief prayer was finished the child smiled again, turned on her side, and breathed her last. The mother was prostrate with grief at her loss. The father, Mr. Thomas Mains, is a wireless operator on a ship, and the last letter received from him was from Hongkong.