“Why, I mean,” he said, with rather more apparent constraint than before, “that you said things which made me uncomfortable, preached me a little sermon, in fact.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon; I did not mean to preach indeed.”
“It’s all right, it did me good. I don’t mind a girl preaching, and I thought over what you said very seriously. I—” he hesitated, and then finished hurriedly, “I thought you’d like to know.”
“Indeed I’m very glad, if you didn’t think me rude. Perhaps if my preaching did you good, it might do Crispin good too—if only I could get hold of him.”
Dick laughed.
“I don’t think I should set my heart too much upon that. Crispin is a thorough-paced old rascal.”
“You don’t know him. You haven’t seen into his heart,” cried Freda, rising from the window-seat in her earnestness, and bending forward so that she might look into the young man’s face. For very little light now came through the old mullioned window.
“Well, I don’t believe he has a heart to see into.”
“Ah, that is because you have been careless, and have neglected your religion. We all, even the worst, have a heart; it may sleep sometimes, so that men think it is dead. But if God sends some one, with love for Him alive and glowing, to speak to that sleeping heart, it awakens, and a little spark of love and goodness will shine bright in it. Don’t you believe that?”
“I believe that if anybody could work miracles through goodness, it would be you. But it would take a thundering big miracle to make Crispin Bean anything but an unprincipled rascal. Why, if you only knew—— But then it’s better you should not know,” said he, pulling himself up hurriedly and getting up to go.