"Do you like the stars? I like them very much."
"Yes, Chris," I answered; "so do I."
"I think they are the most beautifullest things," he remarked with enthusiasm.
"Yes, they are," I replied. "They are like the great and loving deeds of God, falling in a bright shower from heaven upon the earth beneath."
"When I go to heaven, will God give me some stars if I ask Him very much?" Chris inquired, most seriously. "P'r'aps if I ask Him every day in my prayers till I'm dead He will then."
I smiled a little.
"No, darling," I said, smoothing his hair gently; "the stars are not the little things they seem to you. You see, they are worlds like our world. It is only because they are such thousands and thousands of miles away that they look to you so small."
Chris pondered over this for a moment or two, then he said thoughtfully:
"Miss Beggarley, I want to ask you, when the good man got to the top of the hill, did he see that the stars were big worlds and not little, tiny things?"
"Yes," I replied, half to him, half to myself; "he saw then that those things which, at the foot of the hill, had seemed to him so small and so far away he had given them but little consideration, were in reality great, and beautiful, and worlds in their importance. And he saw, too, that the things which in the valley beneath had appeared to him of such infinite value were by comparison poor and valueless, not worthy the thought he had given them or the pain they had so often caused him...."