Mary Elizabeth said that a little dry toast and a cup of milk would do nicely. So all the gentlemen laughed. And she wondered why.
And the young man with the brown curls laughed, too, and began to look quite happy. But he ordered chicken and cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes and celery and rolls and butter and tomatoes and an ice cream and a cup of tea and nuts and raisins and cake and custard and apples and grapes.
And Mary Elizabeth sat in her pink dress and red shawl and ate the whole; and why it didn't kill her nobody knows; but it didn't.
The young man with the face that might have been beautiful—that might be yet, one would have thought who had seen him then—stood watching the little girl.
"She's preached me the best sermon," he said below his breath, "I ever heard. May God bless her! I wish there were a thousand like her in this selfish world!"
And when I heard about it I wished so, too.
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward
Oh, there is nothing on earth half so holy
As the innocent heart of a child.
Dickens