"Perhaps one hardly need to say that the kept hands will be very gentle hands." She did not repeat the words, but they repeated themselves to her, in a way that startled. Once more she looked down at her hands. Was He actually dishonored by that quick, irritable movement? The face of the man beside her looked troubled; he had seen the movement and had reached forth and clasped the offending little hand in his own rough one. He looked very careworn, and the smaller of the children, who was but a baby, began to utter wailing cries which he vainly tried to hush. Hopeless little cries they were; they went, someway, to Elsie's heart. She was sorry her hand had been so un-Christ-like in its movement. How could she atone for it? She reached forth for her lunch basket, and drawing therefrom a rosy-cheeked apple presented it to the little girl. The small soiled hand grasped after it eagerly, and the father smiled and leaned forward to admonish the child to thank the giver. "They both look very tired," Elsie said, gently; "travelling is hard for children."
The man drew a heavy sigh. "It is hard for them," he said. "They miss their mother; they don't know what to make of it, and I don't know how to do for them as she would. I buried her last Tuesday."
[CHAPTER II.]
A DISMAYED exclamation from Elsie; then she added, "Poor little things!" in a tone that conveyed much to the sad father's heart.
"You may well say that," he said, getting out his handkerchief hastily, to wipe the great tears that would gather in his eyes. "Two babies, you may say, with no one but a blundering father to do for them! I'm bound to do the very best I can, but what's a man worth when it comes to such work as that! And them crying for their mother every little while! This one," touching the head of the older child with gentle hand, "couldn't get herself to go to sleep, no how, last night. I patted her, and coaxed her for an hour; but she said she 'wanted mamma too bad for anything.'"
There were tears in Elsie's eyes now, and she reached for the soiled little hand and gathered it tenderly into her gloved one. For the rest of that journey the motherless child had a friend. The baby slept on his father's shoulder; and Elsie devoted herself to making the five-year-old happy. Among other womanly offices, she took the child forward to the water-cooler, and by dint of patient use of handkerchief and some of her own sweet-scented soap, she made the small hands rosy with cleanliness. This was so that she could have a delicately tinted card from the lady's pocket. An illuminated card, with an outline picture of two hands clasped; the one a small, childish hand, the other large and firm, suggestive of strength and protection. There were words underneath, and the child demanded that they be read. It was one of Elsie's class cards, and the verse: "Who shall ascend into the Hill of the Lord, and who shall stand in His holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart."
"It means, who shall go to live with Jesus in heaven?" explained Elsie.
The little girl looked gravely down at her small pink hands. "My hands are clean," she said, reflectively. "I guess I can go, mamma went. It was Jesus who took her."
Elsie's eyes dimmed again as she answered the child gently, "Yes, and He wants you; wants you to keep your hands clean, so you can go. Not simply clean with water, you know, but clean from every wrong and naughty thing."
The grave-eyed child considered. "I slap Johnnie, sometimes," she said, sadly, "when he's cross."