"Yes; you can tell then. And you may come to like us so well you may stay content."
"Oh, if he comes! Then it will be all right. And you think I ought to pray for that?"
It was a cruel strait for Miss Eunice and staggered her faith. She was not to lead astray or harm "one of the least of these." But the child was a heathen with no real knowledge of the true God. Like a vision almost, Miss Eunice looked back at her own childhood, and the awful, overshadowing power she believed was God, who wrote down every wicked thought and wrong deed, and would confront her with them at the Judgment Day. She prayed nightly, often in the night, when she woke up, and she was no surer of God's love than this little heathen child.
"It is right to pray for the things we want, but to be resigned if God doesn't see fit to give them to us."
"Then the prayers are thrown away. And do you know just what God is?"
"My dear!" in a shocked tone, "no one can tell. It is one of the mysteries to be revealed when we see Him as He truly is at the last day. A little girl cannot understand it. I do not, and I have sought the truth many years. Now I am trusting, because I feel assured He will do what is right. Tell me something about your life with your father."
"Oh, things were so different there. Houses, and there were always servants, so you didn't ever need to fan yourself. Babo and Nalla were always about. Babo used to take me out in a chair that had curtains around and a big umbrella overhead. Sometimes Chandra went with him. And the streets were funny and crooked, and houses set anywhere in them. I liked going up in the mountains best, it wasn't so hot. And the trees were splendid, and beautiful vines and flowers of all sorts. Mrs. Dallas went the last time. She had two girls and a big boy. I did not like him. He would pinch my arms and then say he didn't. I liked the girls, one was larger than I. And we swung in the hammocks the vines made. Only I was afraid of the snakes, and there are so many everywhere. Alfred liked to kill them."
She shuddered a little and glanced about the room with dilated eyes.
"They come into your houses sometimes. Nalla used to catch them and sling them hard on the ground, and that stunned them. And we used to make wreaths of the beautiful flowers. Agnes Dallas knew so many stories about fairies, little people who come out at night, when the moon shines, and dance round in rings. They slip in houses, and the nice ones do some work, but the wicked ones sour the milk, and spoil the bread, and hide things. And, sometimes, they change children into a cat, or a rabbit, or something, and it is seven years before you can get your own shape again. Do you have them here?"
"There is no such thing. That is all falsehood," was the decisive comment.