“Seems to me,” said Harry in a choky voice, “that it is about time we began our prayers. It is like going to sleep at night. Just when you are preparing to sleep you say your prayers, and then you dump your head down on your pillow and off you go to by-bye land. Then mother comes and kisses you, and she says—— Oh, bother! I don’t want to think of that. Let’s try and fancy that it is night. Let’s begin our prayers. Oh, what a wave that is! Why, it has dashed right into my eyes.”
“How far up is the water now, Pauline?” asked Penelope from her position.
“It is not very far up yet,” replied Pauline in as cheerful a tone as she could. “We had better do what Harry says, and say our prayers.”
“Shall us?” said Pen.
“I think so,” replied Pauline.
There was a strange sensation in her throat, and a mist before her eyes. Her feet were so icy cold that it was with difficulty she could keep herself from slipping.
“Which prayer shall we say?” asked Harry. “There’s a lot of them. There’s our special private prayers in which we say, ‘God bless father and mother;’ and then there’s ‘Our Father.’”
“‘Our Father’ is best,” said Pauline.
The children began repeating it in a sing-song fashion. Suddenly Pen violently clutched hold of Pauline.
“Will God forgive our badnesses?” she asked.