The poor girl was very grateful to them for all their kindness. She sat beside Rosalie's mother all the morning, and did everything she could for her. The effect of the doctor's medicine had passed off, and the sick woman was very restless and wakeful. She was burnt with fever, and tossed about from side to side of her bed. Every now and then her mind seemed to wander, and she talked of her mother and her sister Lucy, and of other things which Rosalie did not understand. Then she became quite sensible, and would repeat over and over again the words of the hymn, or would ask Rosalie to read to her once more about the lost sheep and the Good Shepherd.
When the child had read the parable, the mother turned to Jessie, and said to her, very earnestly—
'Oh, do ask the Good Shepherd to find you now, Jessie; you'll be so glad of it afterwards.'
'I've been so bad!' said Jessie, crying. 'My mother has often talked to me, and Mrs. Leslie has too; and yet, after all, I've gone and done this. I daren't ever ask Him to find me now.'
'Why not, Jessie?' said Rosalie's mother; 'why not ask Him?'
'Oh, He would have nothing to say to me now,' said the girl, sobbing, and hiding her face in her hands. 'If I'd only gone to Him that Sunday!'
'What Sunday?' asked Rosalie.
'It was the Sunday before I left home. Mrs. Leslie talked to us so beautifully; it was about coming to Jesus. She asked us if we had come to Him to have our sins forgiven; and she said, "If you haven't come to Him already, do come to Him to-day." And then she begged those of us who hadn't come to Him before, to go home when the class was over, and kneel down in our own rooms and ask Jesus to forgive us that very Sunday afternoon. I knew I had never come to Jesus, and I made up my mind that I would do as our teacher asked us. But, as soon as we were outside the vicarage, the girls began talking and laughing, and made fun of somebody's bonnet that they had seen at church that morning. And when I got home I thought no more of coming to Jesus, and I never went to Him;—and oh, I wish that I had!'
'Go now,' said Rosalie's mother.
'It wouldn't be any good,' said the girl sorrowfully; 'if I thought it would—if I only thought He would forgive me, I would do anything—I would walk twice the distance home!'