The parson took leave of her at a convenient issue from the park. But before she had gone many steps he came running after her and said—
“By the way, Miss Wylder, here are some verses that may please you! We were talking about our hopes for the animals! I heard the story they are founded on the other day from my friend the dissenting minister of the village. The little daughter of Dr. Doddridge, the celebrated theologian, was overheard asking the dog if he knew who made him. Receiving no reply, she said what you will find written there as the text of the poem.”
He put a paper in her hand, and left her. She opened it, and found what follows:—
DR. DODDRIDGE'S DOG.
“What! you Dr. Doddridge's dog, and not know who made you!”
My little dog, who blessed you
With such white toothy-pegs?
And who was it that dressed you
In such a lot of legs!
I'm sure he never told you
Not to speak when spoken to!
But it's not for me to scold you:—
Dogs bark, and pussies mew!
I'll tell you, little brother,
In case you do not know:—
One only, not another,
Could make us two just so.
You love me?—Quiet!—I'm proving!—
It must be God above
That, filled those eyes with loving!—
He was the first to love!
One day he'll stop all sadness—
Hark to the nightingale!
Oh blessed God of gladness!—
Come, doggie, wag your tail!
That's “Thank you, God!”—He gave you
Of life this little taste;
And with more life he'll save you,
Not let you go to waste!
So we'll live on together,
And share our bite and sup;
Until he says, “Come hither,”—
And lifts us both high up!
Barbara was so much pleased with the verses that she thought them a great deal better than they were.
Wingfold walked home thinking how, in his dull parish, where so few seemed to care whether they were going back to be monkeys or on to be men, he had yet found two such interesting young people as Richard and Barbara.
He had come upon Richard again at his grandfather's, had had a little more talk with him, and had found him not so far from the kingdom of heaven but that he cared to deny a false god; and he had just discovered in Barbara, who so seldom went to church and who came of such strange parents, one in whom the love of God was not merely innate, but keenly alive. The heart of the one recoiled from a God that was not; the heart of the other was drawn to a God of whom she knew little: were not the two upon converging tracks? What to most clergymen would have seemed the depth of a winter of unbelief, seemed to Wingfold a springtime full of the sounds of the rising sap.
“What man,” he said to himself, “knowing the care that some men have of their fellow-men, even to the spending of themselves for them, can doubt that, loving the children, they must one day love the father! Who more welcome to the heart of the eternal father, than the man who loves his brother, whom also the unchanging father loves!”