“I ask your pardon for interrupting you, but saying is not praying. Did you really pray them?”
“Phoebe, I do not understand you! How could I pray them and not say them?”
“Well, I did not quite mean that,” said Phoebe; “but please, Mrs Gatty, did you feel them? Did you really ask God all the collects say, or did you only repeat the words over? You see, if I felt cold in bed, I might ask Mrs Betty to give me leave to have another blanket; but if I only kept saying that I was cold, to myself, over and over, and did not tell Mrs Betty, I should be long enough before I got the blanket. Did you say the collects to yourself, Mrs Gatty, or did you say them to the Lord?”
There was a pause before Gatty said, in rather an awed voice, “Phoebe, when you pray, is God there?”
“Yes,” said Phoebe, readily.
“He is not, with me,” replied Gatty. “He feels a long, long way off; and I feel as if my collects might drop and be lost before they can get up to Him. Don’t you?”
“Never,” answered Phoebe. “But I don’t send my prayers up by themselves; I give them to Jesus Christ to carry. He never drops one, Mrs Gatty.”
“’Tis all something I don’t understand one bit,” said Gatty, wearily. “Go to sleep, Phoebe; I won’t keep you awake. But we’ll go and see Mrs Dolly.”
The next afternoon, when Rhoda and Molly had disappeared on their private affairs, Gatty dropped a courtesy to Madam, and requested her permission to visit Mrs Dolly Jennings.
“By all means, my dear,” answered Madam, affably. “If Rhoda has no occasion for her, let Phoebe wait on you.”