"Will He wash me?" said little Dot.
"I am sure He will, my child, if you ask Him," said the gentleman.
Then he took the two little girls to a seat on the gravel path not far away, and he taught them this short prayer:
"'Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.'"
And that prayer was treasured up in little Dot's heart.
Over and over again she repeated it as she walked home, and many times she said it during the day. And when Dot's mother came to look at her child in bed, little Dot turned over in her sleep, and she heard the words again, "Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow."
[CHAPTER VIII]
THE FADING DAISY
THE autumn came on very early that year. There were cold east winds, which swept among the trees of the cemetery, and scattered their leaves on the ground. Then there were thick mists and drizzling rains, and each morning and evening the dew fell heavily on the grass. And now and then there was a slight frost, which nipped the geraniums and the fuchsias and all the flowers which had been so bright through the summer.
It grew very damp and chilly in the cemetery, but Dot was still in her place at Solomon's side. She was very pale and thin, he thought; and he fancied she shivered sometimes as she stood on the damp grass. He would wrap her up in his old great-coat very tenderly as she sat on the cold stone near him, and he would tell her to run about to warm herself many times in the day.