"I'll tell you where you will like the music, Bud—when you get to heaven. Did you ever try to think what that singing would sound like?"
"Me!" said Bud again, and this time there was unutterable amazement in his voice. It was clear that the idea of hearing the music of heaven had never dawned on his mind.
Claire replied hesitatingly, in almost a plaintive tone. The desolation of a soul that had no heaven to look to, touched her strangely just then:
"Bud, you are going there to hear the music, are you not?"
"I reckon not." He spoke the words gravely, with a singularly mournful intonation. "Heaven ain't for such as me. You see, ma'am, I'm nothing but an ignorant, blundering fellow, that hadn't never ought to have been born."
"Oh, Bud! I am so sorry to hear you speak such dreadful words! I didn't expect it of you. Why, don't you know you are the same as saying that the Lord Jesus Christ has not told the truth? He said he came to earth in order that you might live forever with him in heaven, and he loves you, Bud, and is watching for you to give yourself to him. And now, you even say you ought not to have been made!"
"I didn't mean no harm! I was only a-sayin' what I've heard folks say time and time again about me; they didn't see what I was made for, and I didn't either."
"You were made to love God, and to do work for him, and to live with him forever in his beautiful heaven. If you don't go there, it will make his heart sad. Oh, Bud, if I were you, I wouldn't treat him so!"