Alie was silent for some time. Her fingers were now busily hemming a seam, but her thoughts were far away from her work. At last she said softly, as if to herself, “And yet that poor child is precious!”
“Precious to her parents! I don’t believe it!” exclaimed Johnny. “She looks as though they half starved her; and didn’t you see the bruises on her bare arms? I don’t believe they’d care if she died in a ditch.”
“She is precious in the eyes of the Lord,” murmured Alie. “That poor little girl has a soul!”
Johnny did not answer for some time; and when he did so, it was with a forced lightness of manner. “I don’t see what you and I have to do with the matter, Alie; we are not the little beggar’s keepers!”
“I am not my brother’s keeper: I have read these words somewhere in the Bible,” said Alie; “but I can’t at this moment remember what part of it they come from.”
“Can’t you?” replied Johnny; “why, they were the words of Cain, when he was asked about his brother Abel.”
There was another long silence.
“I wonder,” exclaimed Alie, clasping her hands, “if we could do nothing to save that poor child?”
“I can do nothing, at least,” replied Johnny, and went whistling out of the house.
But Alie’s mind was not so easily satisfied. She was one of those who have learned, from such solemn verses as that which stands at the commencement of my tale, that there is sin not only in doing the things which we ought not to do, but in leaving undone the things which we ought to do; and doth not He that pondereth the heart consider it? She knew that it is the duty, and ought to be the delight, of every Christian to help others on in the road to heaven, or lending good books, or assisting with the purse such valuable societies as have been formed to carry out this holy work.