"My dear," I said, "what do you beg my pardon for? I was so pleased to see you asleep! and you look as if you thought I were going to scold you."
"O papa," she said, laying her head on my shoulder, "I am afraid I must be very naughty. I so often feel now as if I were doing something wrong, or rather as if you would think I was doing something wrong. I am sure there must be something wicked in me somewhere, though I do not clearly know what it is. When I woke up now, I felt as if I had neglected something, and you had come to find fault with me. Is there anything, papa?"
"Nothing whatever, my child. But you cannot be well when you feel like that."
"I am perfectly well, so far as I know. I was so cross to Dora to-day! Why shouldn't I feel happy when everybody else is? I must be wicked, papa."
Here Connie woke up.
"There now! I've waked Connie," Wynnie resumed. "I'm always doing something I ought not to do. Please go to sleep again, Connie, and take that sin off my poor conscience."
"What nonsense is Wynnie talking about being wicked?" asked Connie.
"It isn't nonsense, Connie. You know I am."
"I know nothing of the sort, Wynnie. If it were me now! And yet I don't feel wicked."
"My dear children," I said, "we must all pray to God for his Spirit, and then we shall feel just as we ought to feel. It is not for anyone to say to himself how he ought to feel at any given moment; still less for one man to say to another how he ought to feel; that is in the former case to do as St. Paul says he had learned to give up doing—to judge our own selves, which ought to be left to God; in the latter case it is to do what our Lord has told us expressly we are not to do—to judge other people. You get your bonnet, Wynnie, and come out with me. I am going to explore a little of this desert island upon which we have been cast away. And you, Connie, just to please Wynnie, must try and go to sleep again."