“Come, Padre,” cried Carmen, returning to him, “we are going to just try now to have all the nice thoughts we can. Let’s just look all around us and see if we can’t think good thoughts about everything. And, do you know, Padre dear, I’ve tried it, and when I look at things and something tries to make me see if there could possibly be anything bad about them––why, I find there can’t! Try it, and see for yourself.”
Josè knew it. He knew that the minds of men are so profaned by constantly looking at evil that their thoughts are tinged with it. He was striving to look up. But in doing so he was combating a habit grown mighty by years of indulgence.
“When you always think good about a thing,” the girl went on, “you never can tell what it will do. But good always comes from it. I know. I do it all the time. If things look bad, I just say, ‘Why look, here’s something trying to tell me that two and two are seven!’ And then it goes away.”
“Your purity and goodness resist evil involuntarily, little one,” said Josè, more to himself than to the child.
“Why, Padre, what big words!”
“No, little one, it is just the meaning of the words that is big,” he replied.
The girl was silent for some moments. Then:
“Padre dear, I never thought of it before––but it is true: we don’t see the meaning of words with the same eyes that we see trees and stones and people, do we?”
Josè studied the question. “I don’t quite understand what you mean, chiquita,” he was finally forced to answer.
“Well,” she resumed, “the meaning of a word isn’t something that we can pick up, like a stone; or see, as we see the lake out there.”