"Then you loved your father?"
"Loved him!" replied the child, with a look of touching despondency. "My dear dead father—did you ask me if I loved him? What else in the wide, wide world had I to love?"
"Your mother," said Mrs. Chester.
That flush of crimson shot over the child's face again, and bowing her head with a look of the keenest anguish, she faltered out,
"My mother!"
"Well, my poor child," said Mrs. Chester, compassionating the strange feeling whose source she could only guess at, "I will not ask any more questions to-night. Keep up a good heart. You are almost an orphan, and God takes care of little orphans, you know."
"Oh, yes, God will take care of me," answered the child, turning her large eyes downward upon her person, with a look that said more plainly than words, "helpless and ugly as I am."
"It is the helpless—it is children whom our Saviour—you know about our Saviour?"
"Oh, yes, I know."
"Well, it was such little helpless creatures as you are whom our
Saviour meant, when he said, 'Of such is the kingdom of Heaven.'"