"Cicely," asked Lucy, returning to the charge, "do you understand Dr. Braithwaite's sermons?"
"No, my dear, scarce a word," said Cicely.
"I wonder at your listening so quietly!"
"Well, you see, my dear, I has my thoughts," said Cicely, fitting the ruffle. "If aught goes on that I can't understand, why, I has my thoughts. When Master reads a sermon of an evening, well, sometimes I understand, and sometimes not. If I do, well and good; but if I don't, I can sit and think. And I think, Miss Lucy, that there's a deal of difference between you and me; but there's a cruel deal bigger difference between either of us and Him up yonder. It must be a sight harder for us to understand Him than it is to understand Parson Braithwaite."
"But what has that to do with it, Cicely?" asked Lucy, wonderingly.
"Why, my dear, ben't that what all sermons is for—to teach us to understand God? Just the beginning, you know, must be hard; it always is. Why, when Madam had me learned to read—old Madam, your grandmother, my dears—do you think I liked learning the Christ-Cross-Row?[[2]] Wasn't it very hard, think you, keeping day after day a-saying, 'A, B, C, D,' when there wasn't no sense in it? But 'tis all through the Christ-Cross-Row that I've learned to read the Book. Eh! but I have thanked old Madam many a hundred times for having me learned to read the Book! Well, my dears, 'tis always hard at the beginning; and sure the beginning of learning Him must be harder nor learning to read."
"Why, Cicely, you are as bad to understand as Dr. Braithwaite!"
"Maybe so, my dear. If a little one asked you for to tell him what big A was like, I think you'd scarce make him understand without showing him. And if you want to know what He is like, I think you must read the Book. 'Tis like a picture of Him. I don't know any other way, without you read the Book."
"Do you mean the Bible, Cicely? But Dr. Braithwaite does not say much about that."
"I haven't got nought to say about Parson Braithwaite, Miss Lucy. But surely all that is good in any sermon or aught else must come out of the Book."