“I know nothing about Him!” muttered the child.
“Not know about God!—never pray to Him!” exclaimed Alie.
But here the conversation was suddenly broken off by the gipsy woman calling to the child. Madge looked frightened, like one who had often found a word to be followed by a blow, and obeyed the call, though reluctantly, casting a parting look of regret, not at Alie, but at her pretty white kitten, and in a few minutes more both the gipsy and child had disappeared down a lane.
“Oh, poor, wretched little Madge!” thought Alie; “no wonder that she took the cake—no wonder if she grow up miserable and wicked! She does not know about God—she does not know that He made her—that He watches over her—that He hates sin, and will punish it! What will become of her in this world? what will become of her in the next?”
When her brother Johnny came home from the fields, Alie told him of the little gipsy girl.
“I’ve heard of the gipsies,” said he; “they’ve pitched their tent down yon lane, and the farmer says that he must keep a good look-out after his poultry. There’s a big woman, and an ill-looking man with a fur cap and a patch over his eye, who offers to mend kettles and pans. Farmer says he’s sure the fellow has seen the inside of many a jail, and hopes the party won’t stay long in the place.”
THE GIPSIES.
“Poor little Madge! it’s not her fault that she is the child of such people!” said Alie.
“She’ll not get much good from them, I take it. She’ll learn to tell falsehoods like her mother, and to steal like her father, and perhaps end her days in prison,” observed Johnny.