"The bad, hateful thing!" answered Maggie, with a sudden burst of crying; "she means our baby is going to die. She wouldn't like any one to say that of her Susie, and I don't believe it a bit. Bessie, I can't bear her if she does make us cookies and turnovers. I like Mr. Jones a great deal better, and I wish he didn't have Mrs. Jones at all. Mamma wont have plenty left if our baby dies; six isn't a bit too many, and she can't spare one of us, I know."
"But perhaps Jesus wants another little angel up in heaven," said Bessie, "and so he's going to take our baby."
"Well, I wish he would take somebody else's baby," said Maggie. "There's Mrs. Martin, she has thirteen children, and I should think she could spare one very well; and there's a whole lot of little babies at the Orphan Asylum, that haven't any fathers and mothers to be sorry about them."
"Perhaps he thinks our baby is the sweetest," said Bessie.
"I know she is the sweetest," said Maggie, "but that's all the more reason we want her ourselves. She is so little and so cunning; I think she grows cunninger and cunninger every day. Day before yesterday she laughed out loud when I was playing with her, and put her dear little hands in my curls and pulled them, and I didn't mind it so very much if she did pull so hard I had to squeal a little; and oh! I'd let her do it again, if she would only get well. Don't you think, Bessie, if we say a prayer, and ask Jesus to let us keep her, he will?"
"I think he will," said Bessie; "we'll try."
"Let us go into the sitting-room," said Maggie, "there is no one there."
"Oh! let us stay out here," answered Bessie, "there's such a beautiful sky up there. Perhaps Jesus is just there looking at us, and maybe he could hear us a little sooner out here. Nobody will see us."
They knelt down together by the seat on the porch. "You say it, Bessie," said Maggie, who was still sobbing very hard. She laid her head down on the bench, and Bessie put her hands together, and with the tears running over her cheeks said, "Dear Jesus, please don't take our darling little baby to be an angel just yet, if you can spare her. She is so little and so sweet, and poor mamma will feel so sorry if she goes away, and we will, too, and we want her so much. Please, dear Jesus, let us keep her, and take some poor little baby that don't have any one to love it, Amen."
They sat down again on the door-step till Harry and Fred came in.