Marjon nodded, and said:
"There are rascals, and deucedly wicked boys, and very likely there is a Devil, also; but I am my Father's child and not afraid of Him, nor what He may do with me."
"But if He makes you ill, and lets you be ill-treated? If He lets you do wrong, and then leaves you to cry about it? And if He makes you foolish?"
Keesje was coming down from the mast, very softly and deliberately. With his black, dirty little hands he cautiously and hesitatingly touched the boy's clothes that Marjon was wearing. He wanted to go to sleep, and had been used to a soft lap. But his mistress took him up, and hid him in her jacket. Then he yawned contentedly, like a little old man, and closed his pale eyelids in sleep—his little face looking very pious with its eyebrows raised in a saintly arch. Marjon said:
"If I should go and ill-treat Keesje, he would make a great fuss about it, but still he would stay with me."
"Yes; but he would do the same with a common tramp," said Johannes.
Marjon shook her head, doubtfully.
"Kees is rather stupid—much more so than you or I, but yet not altogether stupid. He well knows who means to treat him rightly. He knows well that I do not ill-treat him for my own pleasure. And you see, Jo, I know certainly, ever so certainly—that my Father will not ill-treat me without a reason."
Johannes pressed her hand, and asked passionately:
"How do you know that? How do you know?"