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[CHAPTER V.]
A NEW FRIEND.
"WE are to be friends, you see," said the lame boy, cheerfully, as Sandy set him to lean against the parapet, while he picked up the crutch. "I thought I should never catch you, though I have been following you as fast as ever I could all the way from the place where Mr. Mason was preaching. You liked his sermon, didn't you? I saw you listening as if you'd never heard anything like that before; and it's every word true, and more. I thought I'd like to ask you how you liked it; and when you turned in here, I caught up with you. Now would you mind telling me who it was you were speaking to, half aloud?"
The lame boy's voice was frank, and his face was lighted up with a friendly smile, such as Sandy had never met before. He could not shut up his heart against him. Besides, he had been longing to speak to some one about little Gip; somebody who would neither jeer at him nor be angry with him, as the other fusee boys were. Yet he felt shy still, and his brown face grew crimson, and his tongue stammered, as he once more leaned over the parapet, and gazed down at the eddying of the water under the arch, with his head turned away from the stranger.
"I were talkin' to Him as that gentleman spoke of," he said, in a very low tone, "Him as were lost Himself when He were a little child; lost in the streets, you know. The gentleman said now he were growed up. He do always walk up and down the streets lookin' fur folks as were lost. So I were arskin' Him to take care of my little Gip, if He come across her."
"Who's little Gip?" asked the gentle cheery voice at his side.
"Oh! she's my little gel!" cried Sandy, laying his head down on the stone coping, but doing his best to speak calmly. "Mother's little gel, you know; and mother got drunk last Tuesday, that night it rained cats and dogs, and lost Gip somewheres; and I've been lookin' for her ever since everywhere, pokin' into every corner as I can think on; and I begin to be afeard as Gip's dead!"
It had been hard work for Sandy to say all this; but when he came to the word dead, his voice was choked, and the sobs he had kept down broke out vehemently. He felt the strange boy's arm stealing round his neck; and so astonished was he, that his sobbing ceased, and he held his breath to listen to what he was saying.
"If little Gip is dead," he whispered, "she is gone to heaven, to be with the Lord Jesus, and she can never, never be hungry, or cold, or lost again. There are thousands and thousands of little children there, all good, and happy, and safe; and He loves them so! Nothing can ever hurt them again, because He is always taking care of them. If little Gip is dead, she must be with the Lord Jesus."