“And what will he do when he sees you?” asked her mother, coming down the stairs and stepping up behind her.
“Take me up in His arms and kiss me.”
“And what will Faith say?”
“Fank—you!” said the child, softly.
In another minute she was absorbed, body and soul, in the mysteries of One Old Cat.
“But I don’t think she will feel much like being naughty for half an hour to come,” her mother said; “hear how pleasantly her words drop! Such a talk quiets her, like a hand laid on her head. Mary, sometimes I think it is His very hand, as much as when He touched those other little children. I wish Faith to feel at home with Him and His home. Little thing! I really do not think that she is conscious of any fear of dying; I do not think it means anything to her but Christ, and her father, and pink blocks, and a nice time, and never disobeying me, or being cross. Many a time she wakes me up in the morning talking away to herself, and when I turn and look at her, she says: ‘O mamma, won’t we go to heaven to-day, you fink? When will we go, mamma?’”
“If there had been any pink blocks and ginger-snaps for me when I was at her age, I should not have prayed every night to ‘die out.’ I think the horrors of death that children live through, unguessed and unrelieved, are awful. Faith may thank you all her life that she has escaped them.”
“I should feel answerable to God for the child’s soul, if I had not prevented that. I always wanted to know what sort of mother that poor little thing had, who asked, if she were very good up in heaven, whether they wouldn’t let her go down to hell Saturday afternoons, and play a little while!”
“I know. But think of it,—blocks and ginger-snaps!”
“I treat Faith just as the Bible treats us, by dealing in pictures of truth that she can understand. I can make Clo and Abinadab Quirk comprehend that their pianos and machinery may not be made of literal rosewood and steel, but will be some synonyme of the thing, which will answer just such wants of their changed natures as rosewood and steel must answer now. There will be machinery and pianos in the same sense in which there will be pearl gates and harps. Whatever enjoyment any or all of them represent now, something will represent then.