"Why—why of course I knew him. I don't remember whether I looked right at his face——"
"I am quite sure that you did not, Mary, or you would never have let him go away without trying to make him feel better. You are not a selfish little girl; and I am very sure that when you understand the harm you are doing to your good, kind uncle, you will try to put an end to it."
"The harm—I—am—doing—to—Uncle! You surely don't know me very well, Sister, if you think I would harm Uncle for anything in the whole world!"
"I am very, very sure, Mary, that you would not intend to harm him."
"But what is it, Sister? Won't you please tell me? Am I bad?" the child asked piteously. "Is it bad to be so tired, and not to be hungry, and to like just to think of my darling father and mother and little sisters, and to want Uncle to stay with me every minute he can? Am I a bad girl to do that?"
"I did not mean for an instant that you have been a bad girl, dear. It is weakness that makes you so tired; but unless you try to take food even though you are not hungry, you cannot expect to grow stronger. Surely, since the good God did not take you from those who love you so much, He must wish you to do everything you can to grow well and strong. As for your father and mother and the babies, you would be a strange little girl if you did not think of them very, very often; but in the way you have been doing it, dear child, you have, without knowing it, been harming yourself and others. Let me tell you just how it has all seemed to me. First, our dear Lord sent you the measles——"
"Oh, did He, Sister? I thought I caught them at school."
"But if it had not been His will that you should have them, you would not have caught them. That illness meant that you must be away from your mother and little sisters; but you were so good and brave and patient about it all that others would not have guessed how much that separation cost you until they saw how happy you were at the thought of being with them soon again. I am sure that our dear Lord was very much pleased with you, and you must have won many graces.
"Then, for His own wise reasons, He sent you greater suffering. There are some people who think that all pain and sorrow is a punishment from God; but this is not true. Our Lord often sends such trials so that we may grow more like Him and merit a greater reward in heaven. We are told that suffering is a mark of God's love. Even when He sends it as a punishment, He does so in love; for it is far better to be punished for our sins in this world than in the next.
"In your second illness, I really think that those who love you suffered more from the fear of losing you than you did even from the great pain. However that may be, our dear Lord wished you to do something more for Him—something that you found much harder than your first or second trial. In those you had no choice. The illness came, and you could not escape it. But you might have refused our Lord when He asked you to give up your mother——"