“She isn’t like the picture in my story-book of the heathen that lived in India, and all the people worshipped, that was named a god, One told me when I asked him; but I guess heathens can change like fairies; and, please don’t go, father, don’t!”
“Nonsense, Four. What trash are you talking? It is you who are the heathen now.”
“I, father? I!”
In horror of a possible change in his person, the child began to feel of his plump face and pinch his fat body. He even imagined he was stiffening all over. Suddenly, he drew his wide mouth into a grotesque imitation of the engraving as he remembered it, planting his feet firmly and setting up a tragic wail.
“I’m not like him. I won’t be. I won’t, I won’t, I won’t!”
Kitty understood nothing but the evident distress, which she attempted to soothe and merely aggravated.
“Get away! Don’t you touch me! You go away home and sit on a table with your legs all crooked up—so; and stop playing you’re a regular girl. Leave go my father’s hand, I say!”
Then One came to the rescue. As soon as he could stop laughing, he explained the situation to the others, and though the incident seemed a trivial one to the younger people to the good Doctor it was weighty with reproach for the ignorance he had permitted in his own household. It also had its far-reaching results; for it led him to observe the Sun Maid critically, and, when he had heard her simple story, to ask out of the fulness of his own big heart:
“Will you come and share our home with us, my daughter? Surely, you have much good sense and many wonderful gifts. The Lord has thrown us into one another’s company, and I believe you can, in large measure, take their mother’s place to these sons of mine. Will you come and live in our home, dear Sun Maid?”