Josè looked at her with a puzzled expression. “What other things do you have to think about, chiquita?”
“About all the people here who are sick and unhappy, and who quarrel and don’t love one another.”
“Do you think about people when they are sick?” he asked with heightened curiosity.
“Yes, always!” she replied vigorously “When they are sick I go where nobody can find me and then just think that it isn’t so.”
“Hombre!” the priest ejaculated, his astonishment soaring Then––
“But when people are sick it is really so, isn’t it, chiquita?”
“No!” emphatically. “It can’t be––not if God is everywhere. Does He make them sick?” The child drove the heart-searching question straight into him.
“Why––no, I can’t say that He does. And yet they somehow get sick.”
“Because they think bad things, Padre. Because they don’t think about God. They don’t think He is here. And they don’t care about Him––they don’t love Him. And so they get sick,” she explained succinctly.