Once the difficulty was rather opposite.
"Can you be good without God's grace?"
I told her I certainly could not.
"Well, I can!" she answered delightedly. "I want to pray now."
"Now? It is eight o'clock now. Haven't you had prayer long ago?" (We all get up at six o'clock.)
"No. That's just what I meant. I skipped my prayer this morning, and so of course I got no grace; but I have been helping the elder Sisters. Wasn't that right?"
"Yes, quite right."
"And yet I hadn't got any grace! But I suppose," she added reflectively, "it was the grace over from yesterday that did it."
As a rule she is not distinguished for very deep penitence, but at one time she had what she called "a true sense of sin" which fluctuated rather, but was always hailed, when it appeared in force, as a sign of better things. After a day of mixed goodness and badness the Elf prayed most devoutly, "I thank Thee for giving me a sense of sin to-day. O God, keep me from being at all naughty to-morrow. But if I am naughty, Lord, give me a true sense of sin!"
