"Oh, no, we're going home very soon, we've come to tea with the Pirate. May I tell you?"
So the whole story was poured out, and the lonely, irritable old man listened, and felt a faint interest in the little speaker.
"Well," he said, when she had finished, "I'm a miserable old man, a living, helpless log; and Fred, who poses to you children as a gallant pirate, is my gaoler, and he hates his job and I don't wonder at it!"
Faith looked at him with her great eyes. Then she bent forward eagerly:
"Why don't you have Somebody I know come and live with you? He would make you so very happy."
"Happy! That's a strange word to use, Miss Moth."
"Oh, it's all true!"
Faith threw off her shyness, she began to speak eagerly:
"I've only been hearing about Him lately. Timothy told me. Mrs. Cox used to say the world was an unhappy place—a weary world she called it; she said we were born to trouble—but she didn't know what I do. Nobody, not a single person, need be unhappy, they've only got to send for the Comforter. He's waiting, He wants to comfort, He goes all over the world finding out the sad.
"Hasn't He ever come to you? It's what He stays in the world for. Jesus sent Him when He went away from us. Do you know about Him? You couldn't possibly be unhappy if you have Him staying with you. Timothy told me thousands of people have died in agonies of pain—they were burnt alive, lots of them—and they only smiled because the Comforter put His Arms round them and held them tight. It's what I ask Him to do to me, to hold me so tight that I only feel Him and nothing else. He wipes away tears, and tells us it is all right, and He knows and He loves us. And I'm getting to love Him so much since I've known about Him. It's Timothy who teaches me. Oh, I wish you could hear how he tells about it. He says if anybody is sick the Comforter is ready to go to them at once."