For Sally Grimes this was all so new: the quiet Sabbath school, those happy children; a light was dawming upon her hitherto clouded mind as she heard of Jesus, who came on earth as a little child, endured a life of poverty and sorrow, then died a cruel death to save us from eternal misery. Never before had she heard the glad tidings of great joy, and her heart was filled with unexpressed thankfulness and peace.
When class was over, the little scholars went their way to church, happy Pollie with her friend's hand still clasped in hers; and the bells rang out their peaceful chime, "It is the Sabbath! it is the Sabbath!" Even the usual noisy bustle of the Strand was hushed in deference to God's holy day. The busy world was calmed to celebrate the day of rest; the peace of God seemed resting upon the earth.
How beautiful the church appeared to Sally, who had never until this day entered a house of prayer (dear old St. Clement's Danes, hallowed to us by many memories), and when the organ pealed forth, and the voices sang "I will arise," she thought, "This must be God's house, and those the angels singing."
There was some one else in the church that Sabbath-day who also thought it must be heaven of which little Pollie had-spoken, and that was poor crippled Jimmy.
Mrs. Turner on coming downstairs to go to church had found the neglected boy as usual lonely and desolate. His drunken mother had gone in a pleasure-van with a party of friends like herself to Hampton Court, leaving her child to amuse himself as he could; and kindly Mrs. Turner had carried him up to her own room, washed and dressed him in one of Pollie's clean frocks, given him some wholesome bread-and-butter, then brought him with her to church.
He sat so still and quiet by the widow's side, his eyes intently fixed upon the clergyman, listening eagerly to every word that was spoken, every hymn that was sung, realising in his untutored mind a foretaste of that heaven of which his earliest friend had told, where hunger was unknown, and where sorrow and sighing should flee away.
Once only, when the rector gave forth his text, "Consider the lilies of the field," the boy grasped the widow's hand, and whispered—
"Be they the flowers Pollie give me?"
Heaven and Pollie's violets filled his heart.