The child looked as if she did not quite understand.
"Do you love your mother, little Angel?" asked the young lady.
"Oh yes, please, ma'am; very much."
"Then your mother is inside your heart. You love her with your heart, don't you?"
"Oh yes, please, ma'am; she does everything for me, does mother."
"But Jesus loves you better than your mother does; and He has done a great deal more for you than she has."
"Has He?" said little Angel simply.
"Yes, indeed He has. Do you know, He lived in heaven, where everything is beautiful and happy, and He left His home there and came to live down here. He lived a very sorrowful life. He was a poor man, little Angel. He had no home of His own, but went about from place to place, often very tired, and hungry, and faint. And people were very unkind to Him; they laughed at Him and hated Him, and threw stones at Him, and hunted Him from place to place; and at last, little Angel, He was nailed on a cross of wood, and they put a crown of thorns on His head."
"Oh yes, please, ma'am; mother has a picture of that. Jesus is on a cross, and some soldiers laughing at Him; it's in a book on the drawers-top that my father bought at a sale."
"Yes," said the young lady; "that was how He died; oh, such a cruel, painful death! And, little Angel, it was all for you!"