“I will tell you one thing about him now,” he replied. “If I took you to live in my house with my little daughters you would have to be washed and clothed in new clothing to make you fit for it. God wanted us to go and live at home with him in heaven, but we were so sinful that we could never have been fit for it. So he sent his own Son to live among us, and die for us, to wash us from our sins, and to give us new clothing, and to make us ready to live in God’s house. When you ask God for any thing you must say, ‘For Jesus Christ’s sake.’ Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”
After these words the minister carefully descended the ladder, followed by Jessica’s bare and nimble feet, and she led him by the nearest way into one of the great thoroughfares of the city, where he said good-by to her, adding, “God bless you, my child,” in a tone which sank into Jessica’s heart.
He had put a silver sixpence into her hand to provide for her breakfast the next three mornings, and with a feeling of being very rich she returned to her miserable home.
The next morning Jessica presented herself proudly as a customer at Daniel’s stall, and paid over the sixpence in advance.
He felt a little troubled as he heard her story, lest the minister should endeavor to find him out; but he could not refuse to let the child come daily for her comfortable breakfast. If he was detected, he would promise to give up his coffee-stall rather than offend the great people of the chapel; but unless he was it would be foolish of him to lose the money it brought in week after week.
CHAPTER IX.
JESSICA’S FIRST PRAYER ANSWERED.
Every Sunday evening the barefooted and bareheaded child might be seen advancing confidently up to the chapel where rich and fashionable people worshipped God; but before taking her place she arrayed herself in a little cloak and bonnet which had once belonged to the minister’s elder daughter, and which was kept with Daniel’s serge gown, so that she presented a somewhat more respectable appearance in the eyes of the congregation. The minister had no listener more attentive, and he would have missed the pinched, earnest little face if it were not to be seen in the seat just under the pulpit. At the close of each service he spoke to her for a minute or two in his vestry, often saying no more than a single sentence, for the day’s labor had wearied him. The shilling, which was always lying upon the chimney-piece, placed there by Jane and Winny in turns, was immediately handed over, according to promise, to Daniel as she left the chapel, and so Jessica’s breakfast was provided for her week after week.
But at last there came a Sunday evening when the minister, going up into his pulpit, did miss the wistful, hungry face, and the shilling lay unclaimed upon the vestry chimney-piece. Daniel looked out for her anxiously every morning, but no Jessica glided into his secluded corner, to sit beside him with her breakfast on her lap and with a number of strange questions to ask. He felt her absence more keenly than he could have expected. The child was nothing to him, he kept saying to himself; and yet he felt that she was something, and that he could not help being uneasy and anxious about her. Why had he never inquired where she lived? The minister knew, and for a minute Daniel thought he would go and ask him; but that might awaken suspicion. How could he account for so much anxiety when he was supposed only to know of her absence from chapel one Sunday evening? It would be running a risk, and, after all, Jessica was nothing to him. So he went home and looked over his savings bank book and counted his money, and he found to his satisfaction that he had gathered together nearly four hundred pounds, and that he was adding more every week.