The child looked up visibly embarrassed. “I was thinking, Padre,” she made slow reply.
“But do you have to go away from home to think?” he queried.
“I wanted to be alone; and there was so much going on in the house that I came out here.”
“And what have you been thinking about, Carmen?” pursued Josè, suspecting that her presence in the hot shale beds held some deeper significance than she had as yet revealed.
“I––I was just thinking that God is everywhere,” she faltered.
“Yes, chiquita. And––?”
“That He is where padre Rosendo is going, and that He will take care of him up there, and bring him back to Simití again.”
“And were you asking Him to do it, little one?”
“No, Padre; I was just knowing that He would.”
The little lip quivered, and the brown eyes were wet with tears. But Josè could see that faith had conquered, whatever the struggle might have been. The child evidently had sought solitude, that she might most forcibly bring her trust in God to bear upon the little problem confronting her––that she might make the certainty of His immanence and goodness destroy in her thought every dark suggestion of fear or doubt.