“Then we will think about it,” answered Herr Adler; and Squib went home with a happy heart, feeling that something new and interesting had come into his life.
Next day he started off early for the valley, and found Seppi there as usual, hard at work drawing. But the chalks and sketch-book had been laid aside, and the little goat-herd was making careful studies from his own flock on odd bits of paper; and so earnest was he over his task, that Squib had sat some few minutes looking over his shoulder before he was aware of his presence.
“O Seppi, you are clever!” cried the admiring Squib, as he took up the little studies one after the other, laughing heartily at some of them, where a goat was depicted in the act of butting its fellow, or executing some antic over a jutting rock.
“No, no,” answered Seppi quickly; “don’t praise me any more, little Herr. It makes me conceited, and that spoils my work. I’m not clever. I began to think I was; but when I saw Herr Adler looking at my drawings, then I knew how bad they were, and I was horribly ashamed of them! When you were gone I told him so; and do you know what he said?”
“What?” answered Squib eagerly.
Seppi paused awhile, and then replied,—
“I can’t say it after all; I mean not as he did. The words are quite different when he says them. You know what I mean, don’t you? But it was something like this—that our lives were somehow like my drawings. We tried to make them good and beautiful and clever, and sometimes thought we were getting on and doing something fine. But when God came and looked at all we had done, we should just feel as though it was—oh, so worthless and poor and bad! not because He would not accept it from us, but because we should feel it all so dreadfully unworthy to offer.”
Squib looked grave and a little puzzled.
“I never thought of things that way,” he answered; “I wish I’d heard Herr Adler talk about it. But I don’t see how he can feel that. He is so very good.”
“Oh yes,” answered Seppi earnestly; “I think he’s the best man in all the world. Everybody here knows that he is a man of God.”