"I like music," said Dolly. "Lem whistles fustrate."
"Yes, we know it," said Maggie. "Once we heard him when we couldn't see him, and we asked Mr. Porter who it was, and he told us it was Lem; and we listened as long as we could hear him: it sounded so sweet and clear. I never heard any one whistle like that."
"Yes," said Dolly, looking pleased; "nobody can beat him at that. S'pose you couldn't sing me a tune 'fore you go, could you? It's so lonesome, lying here."
"Why, yes: we will if you want us to," Bessie answered readily, though she as well as Maggie was much surprised at the request. "We'll sing, 'I want to be an angel.'"
So they stood, these two "ministering children," and sang; their young voices rising sweet and clear amid the solemn stillness of the grand old woods; for very still it was. As the first notes arose, the friends whom they had left, hushed laughter and merry talk that they might not lose one of the sweet sounds. They only knew that Maggie and Bessie had wandered off with papa, and thought this was meant as a pleasant surprise for them.
But it was a higher, greater Friend,—a "Friend above all others,"—whom our little jewel-seekers were just then trying to please; and, although they might not know it, they had that day taken up the first link of the golden chain, by which poor Dolly's soul was to be drawn out of the clouds and darkness in which it had lain, up into the light and sunshine of his glorious presence. A very slight and fragile link it might seem, but it was doubtless very precious in the eyes of the heavenly Father, whose hands could make it strong and lasting, and fit to shine before him in the "day when he shall make up his jewels."
Very precious it was, too, in the eyes of the earthly father, who watched the scene, and looking from his own tenderly cared for, daintily dressed darlings, to the forlorn, ragged outcast, thanked God that for all three alike had the blessed words been spoken, "Suffer little children to come unto me."
"Is that place the song talks about that heaven you was telling about?" asked Dolly when the children had finished "I want to be an angel."
"Yes," said Bessie. "You do want to go there; don't you, Dolly?"