"'Jonah, my lad,' he said, 'I want a word with thee outside.'"
"It was terrible news he had brought, Miss Hilda—that bonny little lassie's mother was dead. She had never looked up since we got her ashore. She was the only one of them we lost, and she was ill at the time, so I've heard, and couldn't have lived many months if she'd got over it. It was hard work fighting with the waves that night in the lifeboat; but it was child's-play to what I had to do now, to go in and tell the little dear that her mother was dead. I called Polly out and told her she must do it, and Polly did nothing but cry and sob and say, 'No,' she couldn't. And once I got as far as the door, Miss Hilda, and then, when I heard her and our Jess laughing and playing together, I turned back again, old coward that I was!"
"It was Jess that did it at last, good little Jess. I sent for her out on the beach, and asked her did she think she could tell it as gentle as could be. So Jess looked very white, poor dear, but she said she would try, and in she went, and Polly and me stood at the door and listened. And Jessie was the best one, after all, Master Stanley, for she threw her arms round the little lady's neck and asked her, 'Did she know where her mother was gone?' When the poor little dear said 'No, she didn't,' Jess took her to the window, and pointed up to a hole in the clouds where a bit of blue sky was peeping through, and, says Jess, 'She's gone up there to God's home; my daddy says she has!' And when the little lass began to cry, Jess talked to her beautiful, she did indeed, Master Stanley; and me and Polly wiped our eyes, and kept as still as mice, lest they should hear us."
"Well, she was with us a good bit, was that little lass. I wouldn't give her up to none of them. Doctor wanted her—parson wanted her—Miss Benson at the Hall wanted her. 'No', I says, 'begging your pardon, I fetched her from the wreck, and she's my bairn till somebody comes for her.' He was abroad was her father, and Captain couldn't find his address at first, so it was a month or two before he came; and I wouldn't have cared if he'd left her altogether."
"She was like a little angel in the house, Miss Hilda. She would get Polly's old Testament every night and read to us as we sat over the fire, and tell us what her mother said about the texts. I learnt more from that little lass than I ever knew before."
"I shall never forget one evening, Master Stanley; I had been telling her all about that terrible night when I fetched her from the wreck."
"'Weren't you very frightened, Mr. Jonah?' she says—she always called me Mr. Jonah, bless her!"
"'Well, Missy,' says I, 'maybe I should have been frightened, if it hadn't been for my little Jess here.' And I gave her the text-card to look at, though it was so soaked through with salt water, it was some time before she could spell it out. But when she did manage to read it, she looks up in my face, and 'Mr. Jonah,' says she, 'shall we read about Jessie's text to-night?'"
"So she turned it up in Polly's Testament—it was wonderful how she could find her way up and down it; and she read about Peter, and John, and all of them, out in the boat, and not knowing what to do, poor souls, tossed with the waves and the wind against them. And the Master up on the mountain, Miss Hilda (you'll have read it, my dear), seeing it all, and just waiting till things got as bad as bad could be, before He came to help them."
"'Why didn't He go a bit sooner, my dear?' says I to that little lass."