"I think it very fair for a nine-years-old girl," answered her father.
"I think it is be-ew-tiful," said Belle. "Maggie writes lots and lots of po'try, and she copies it all. Some of it is pious po'try, and she puts that in one book called 'Bradford's Divine Songs,' and she puts the unpious in another called 'Bradford's Moral Poems;' and Bessie and I learn a great deal of them. They're splen-did, and she is just the smartest child,—Bessie says she is."
If Bessie said a thing, it must be so, according to Belle's thinking; and her father did not dispute the fact. Belle went on,—
"And that is the kind of a sunbeam I would like to be, papa, 'cause I s'pose that is the best kind,—to have the light and brightness come from Jesus,—and it would make me nicer and pleasanter to every one."
"Yes, my darling."
"But I don't see how I am to be much of a sunbeam to any one but you, papa. Maggie and Bessie seem to know how without any one telling them, but I don't know so very well. They are my sunbeams next to you, I know that: are they not, papa?"
"Yes, indeed, my daughter. God bless them," said her father, speaking from his heart as he remembered all that these two dear little girls had been to his motherless child; what true "sunbeams" they had proved to her, cheering and brightening the young life which had been so early darkened by her great loss. Gay, bright, and happy themselves, they were not only willing, but anxious, to pour some of the sunshine of their own joyous hearts into those of others who had not so many blessings.
All this, and more than this, had her young friends done for the lonely little Belle, not only bringing back the light to her saddened eye, and the smiles to her once pitiful face, but also giving her a new interest by awakening in her the wish to shed some happy rays on the lot of others, and leading her by the shining of their own example to become more obedient, gentle, and unselfish than she had ever been before.
"Daphne told me I'll have a whole lot of money when I am a big lady," continued Belle; "and then I should think I could be a sunbeam to ever so many people, and do ever so much to make them glad and happy. I'll build a room, oh, ever so big! and bring into it all the lame and deaf and blind and poor people, and make them have such a nice time. The good ones, I mean: I won't have any naughty people that do bad things. I shan't be a sunbeam to them, or have them in my sunbeam home; no, nor the disagreeable ones either, who don't have nice manners or be pleasant. I'll take ugly people, 'cause they can't help it; but everybody can be pleasant and polite if they choose, and I shan't help the old things who are not. Ugh!"
"But that is not the way Jesus wants us to feel, dear. When He was here on earth, He taught us that we must try to do good to all, that we might be the children of our Father in Heaven, who, He tells us, 'makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.' Do you know what that means?"