"O comfort ye your hearts;
If ye could only know
How few the days
Ere that glad day arrives,
Ye could but praise!
Then wipe your weeping eyes, and joyful say,
'It may be that the King will come to-day.'"
My chief pleasure and delight was in drawing Master Reggie out in his little carriage. Each morning we went together to feed his children, and he soon became almost as dear to me as my little Salome.
Nearly every day he would ask me the same question:
"Peter," he would say, "do you think Jesus will come to-day?"
And when I answered, "I don't know, Master Reggie; we can't tell," he would say, "Oh, I do hope He will come to-day!"
"Do you know, Peter," he said once, "when Jesus comes I shall walk as well as you do, and run and skip and jump! Oh, Peter, won't it be nice?"
And the poor little boy, who had never been able to walk or skip or jump, had tears in his eyes as he said it.
Often he would bring his new Bible out with him, and ask me to read aloud to him out of it. He looked out all the stories about St. Peter, and made me read these to him very often. The story of Peter's walking on the sea was a great favorite of his; but whenever we read about Peter's fall, and his denying his Master, he would take hold of my hand, and say:
"It wasn't you, Peter, you know. You would have called out, 'I do know Him;' wouldn't you, Peter?"
Sometimes, when the days grew damp and cold, and when he could not go out so much or so often, he would send for me to come and see him in his nursery, and would show me his toys and picture-books.