“Yes,” said Maggie, who came dancing up in time to hear these last words. “It was so very considerate of you and Aunt May. Oh! this is the very happiest world I ever lived in. I wish, I wish, I could live a thousand years in it.”
“But Maggie,” said Bessie, “then you’d be so very long away from heaven.”
“Well, yes,” said Maggie; “but then I’d hope to go to heaven after the thousand years, and I’d try to be very good all the time.”
“But long before the thousand years were past, all whom you love would have gone away to that still happier home our Lord has prepared for us,” said the Colonel, “and then you would be lonely and wish to follow, would you not, Maggie?”
“Yes,” answered Maggie, a shade of thoughtfulness coming over her sunny face. “I’m sure I would if all my dear friends went to heaven, and maybe some of them wouldn’t want to live a thousand years.”
“And it’s so hard always to be good,” said Bessie, “and sometimes even we have troubles, and are sick, even though we are so happy ’most all the time.”
“Yes,” said Maggie, “so we do. I’m not sick much ’cept when I have the earache: but maybe I’d be lame and deaf and blind and hump-backed, and all kind of things, before I was a thousand years old; and that would be horrid. I wouldn’t like to have a great many troubles either; so I guess it’s better it is fixed for me just as God chooses.”
“We may be sure of that, dear,” said the Colonel. “God knows what is best for us, and rules our lives for our good and His glory.”
“I’m not sure I mind so very much about the being naughty now and then,” said Maggie. “I know I ought to, but I’m afraid I don’t. I s’pose when I have so much to make me happy I ought to be full of remorse all the time for ever being naughty, but somehow I can’t be. And I do have afflictions sometimes. Oh!” she added, as the thought of her last severe trouble came over her, “we forgot to give Uncle Horace the things we prepared for him. You see, Uncle Horace, one day I found such a very nice proverb, ‘though lost to sight to memory dear;’ and Bessie and I thought we would like to practise it on you; so I finished up that poem I began, and Bessie drew a picture for you, and here is the poem,” and Maggie drew from her pocket the poem, nicely finished and copied out.
“Thank you very much, dear,” said the Colonel. “I am very much pleased; but I thought that the poem was lost, or that you had been robbed of it.”