"Well, Tom; there are angels who take all the children, as soon as they die, and show them wonderful things, and teach them, so they can go into a beautiful place called heaven, and live with God. Well, if you begin to be good here, and love people, you will go into that heaven sooner, when you die, than if you are naughty, and don't think about these things while you are here. I want to go there very much, and so I try to be good, though I don't always make out well." Tom looked thoughtful at his sister's words, and then said:
"I think that little Genevieve will go very fast, when she dies. But I don't think father will get there very soon, now I tell you!"
"O, but Tom," said Hepsa sadly, "we must not think who will not go, but how we may go."
"I wish I knew how to read," said Tom; "but I never can go to school, father makes me saw so much wood."
Then Hepsa asked him to let her teach him; and, after a good deal of hesitation, he told her he didn't care if she did.
Some time after this, Genevieve's father and
mother went away from that place, and she parted from Hepsa with many tears in her eyes, and much grief in her heart. "If I never see you again," she said, "don't forget we are both going into the gardens up there," and Hepsa always remembered.
Genevieve was a very quiet girl, but she was always ready to do something to please her dear mother, and at night brought her father's slippers from the closet, and placed them ready by his chair. She did, too, many little things for the servants, who all loved her very dearly; so when, a few years afterwards, she fell sick, and nothing they could do for her was able to make her any better, but the doctor said she must die, they all wept very much, and no comfort or joy could come into their hearts. But Genevieve gently kissed them, and told them a beautiful peace had come into her heart, for that, in the night, Christ often came to her, and told her how the angel was all ready to take her into his beautiful garden, and teach her out of his great golden books.
At last, one morning she died, and they laid her away in the garden near by the fountain; and