“Wot you telled me about Jesus. He didn’t never love the little children; ef He loved ’em, and ef He is as strong as you say, He’d ha’ helped us to find my little baby Roy.”
A pained look came over Meg’s white and careworn face. She did not answer Faith at all for a moment or two; but having quite finished her dressing, she bent down over her.
“I ha’ made myself as clean as h’ever I could, and I’m off now to morning ragged school; ef you’ll come too, I’ll wait fur yer, Faithy.”
“No, no,” replied Faith, shaking her head. “I’ll stay and wait here. The ragged Sunday-school’s all about Jesus, and I don’t b’lieve in no Jesus now.”
Meg said nothing more; she smothered a faint sigh, and closing the door behind her ran down-stairs. She had more than a mile to walk to Sunday-school, and she was anxious to be in time; but as she walked along, the pained expression called up by Faith’s words had not left her face.
Meg was a wild, untaught, uncared-for Arab child, a true offshoot of the lowest of the people. With a touch of gipsy blood in her veins, with the most ungoverned, uncontrolled passions, she yet was capable of a devotion, of an affection self-absorbing, self-forgetful. Offered up at any other shrine, it would have been idolatry; offered at this, it was worship. Meg loved, something as Mary Magdalene, something as the women who followed to the sepulchre, must have loved our Lord.
All the love of a most loving nature had Meg given to Jesus. It was not alone gratitude which inspired this love. “It’s jest cause He’s so wonderful beautiful His own self,” she would say; and it was agony to her, greater even than it would be to a mother to hear her little child abused, to have a word breathed against Him.
Faith’s words had wrung her heart. She was very sorry for Faith, very sorry that she could have so spoken; but she was more sorry for the pain she feared the words must have caused Jesus.
“I ’ope as yer’ll soon let us find the little ’un, for she’s beginning to think real hard things of yer, and I can’t abear ’em, I can’t abear ’em,” said Meg, looking up at the sky, and comforting herself with this very direct little prayer.
As she was leaving the Sunday-school at the end of the morning’s lessons, it came into her head that perhaps while she and Faith were so earnestly seeking for little Roy, he might all this time be safely at home. How stupid of them both never to have thought of this before! She had heard all about Faith’s respectable home from the little girl herself. Yes; she would go there now and set her mind at rest on this point before returning to Faith.