“The lesson’s done, Davie,” said Donal, and rose and went, leaving him with lady Arctura.
But ere he reached the door, he turned with sudden impulse, and said:—
“Davie, I love Jesus Christ and his Father more than I can tell you—more than I can put in words—more than I can think; and if you love me you will mind what Jesus tells you.”
“What a good man you must be, Mr. Grant!—Mustn’t he, Arkie?” sobbed Davie.
Donal laughed.
“What, Davie!” he exclaimed. “You think me very good for loving the only good person in the whole world! That is very odd! Why, Davie, I should be the most contemptible creature, knowing him as I do, not to love him with all my heart—yes, with all the big heart I shall have one day when he has done making me.”
“Is he making you still, Mr. Grant? I thought you were grown up!”
“Well, I don’t think he will make me any taller,” answered Donal. “But the live part of me—the thing I love you with, the thing I think about God with, the thing I love poetry with, the thing I read the Bible with—that thing God keeps on making bigger and bigger. I do not know where it will stop, I only know where it will not stop. That thing is me, and God will keep on making it bigger to all eternity, though he has not even got it into the right shape yet.”
“Why is he so long about it?”
“I don’t think he is long about it; but he could do it quicker if I were as good as by this time I ought to be, with the father and mother I have, and all my long hours on the hillsides with my New Testament and the sheep. I prayed to God on the hill and in the fields, and he heard me, Davie, and made me see the foolishness of many things, and the grandeur and beauty of other things. Davie, God wants to give you the whole world, and everything in it. When you have begun to do the things Jesus tells you, then you will be my brother, and we shall both be his little brothers, and the sons of his Father God, and so the heirs of all things.”