'If you would like,' said Rosalie timidly, 'I'll find it for you in your Bible, and then you can read it again, as you used to do when you were a girl.'
The woman hesitated when Rosalie said this.
'Well, to tell you the truth, I haven't got my Bible here,' she said. 'My husband sent all the things we wasn't wanting at the time to his relations in Scotland; and somehow the Bible got packed up in the hamper. It will be a year since now. I was very vexed about it at the time.'
'Has the Good Shepherd found you, ma'am?' asked the child.
'Oh, I don't know, child; I don't want much finding. I'm not so bad as all that; I'm a very decent woman, I am. John Thomas will tell you that.'
'Then, I suppose,' said Rosalie, looking very puzzled, 'you must be one of the ninety-and-nine.'
'What do you mean, child?' asked she.
'I mean, one of the ninety-and-nine sheep which don't need any repentance, because they were never lost; and the Good Shepherd never found them, nor carried them home, nor said of them, "Rejoice with Me; for I have found My sheep which was lost."'
'Well,'said Jinx, looking at Rosalie with a half-amused face, if the old mother's one of the ninety-and-nine, what am I?'
'I don't know,' said Rosalie gravely; 'you must know better than I do, Mr
Jinx.'