THE STRANGE CAT.
Emily.—“Now the fire burns dimly, mama, and so it ought for such a melancholy story; and I feel quite sad enough to listen to the rest of what happened to our pretty little wrens; so pray, mama, begin.”
“One day we were sitting at the window sorting seeds to sow in your little gardens, when we heard a scrambling noise in the jessamine which runs up from the porch to my window, where we had just before left the pretty wrens, chirping and stretching their tiny wings to catch the warm sun-beams. The next moment a strange half-starved cat sprung from the jessamine, and crept along the turf till she reached the shrubbery, and then forcing herself through the bushes, hid herself from our sight.
“There was a cry of distress from all the little birds which had before been singing so merrily among the branches, and we saw the poor parent golden-crested wrens wheeling round and round in the air, and following the direction which the strange cat had taken. We remembered the poor goldfinches, so we guessed but too well what had happened. We ran up stairs, and there we heard a fluttering, and we dared scarcely look into the cage; but when we did look, there lay one poor pretty thing quite dead, with its breast all bleeding from a stab by the strange cat’s cruel claw, and the others were all beating the wires with their little gasping bills: in a few minutes two of them dropped down dead by the side of their little brother, and before night the last had pined itself to death.”
THE THUNDER STORM.
“O mama, how I do love to watch a thunder storm,” said Emily to me one evening in April, whilst she leant at the open window gazing at the clouds, and listening to the awful peals which from time to time burst from them. “It reminds me of that beautiful story of Samuel, I could always say, ‘Speak, Lord, thy servant heareth.’—Don’t you think, mama, it seems as if God really spoke to us? But you do not seem to enjoy it;” added she, turning round; “you hide your eyes, and seem quite sad.—Are you frightened, mama?”
“Not for myself, Emily; but I cannot forget that your papa is now crossing the heath, and exposed to these awful flashes of lightning.”
“And I did forget it!—How could I?” said Emily, changing colour, and quitting her post at the window to place herself close by me with her little hands on my lap, clasping one of mine closely between them. Another flash!—She watched my countenance, but said nothing.—Another, still more vivid! She raised herself on tiptoe, and whispered in my ear, “But we have been anxious about papa often before, and yet he has come home safe.—Does that comfort you, mama?”
“It ought, dear Emily; but O what a flash was that!” Emily let go my hand, and darted into my dressing-room, where she remained a few minutes; then returning with a bright cherubic smile, she took her station by me again.
At that moment the whole room was illumined, but Emily did not this time flinch or change colour, but she threw her little arms round my neck, and said, “Mama, I am not frightened now, and perhaps you will be bolder when I tell you what I have done. You do not know why I went into your dressing-room: it was to kneel down and pray God and Jesus Christ to let dear papa come home safe to us again; and if Jesus Christ does suffer little children to come to him, (which you tell me may mean by prayer,) surely it will be when they pray him to take care of their own dear papas—the papas God gave them!—But hark! I hear a horse! It is, it is papa, and he is come home safe!”