Mrs. Crook knew that it depressed sick people sometimes to be told that they were not looking well. She was glad that she could honestly say the contrary to Miss Lawton.
The sick girl smiled, as she answered, "You know the old saying, 'while there is life, there is hope.' I have so many to love that for their sakes I might wish to live, but God has enabled me just to leave myself in His hands. To live and work for Him would be very sweet. To depart and be with Christ far better still. I have only to wait and trust. All will be well."
The sweet low tones of the sick girl's voice fell like music on Mrs. Crook's ear, and they went to her heart and filled it with a strange new longing—a deep desire to know what it was which filled the speaker's whole being with measureless content and peace, that made her face radiant with love and joy, that enabled her to set such little store by the best this world could offer.
In broken words, which she could hardly recognise as her own, Mrs. Crook managed to tell Miss Lawton what she felt, and to add—
"I have always hated to think about death, and counted a long life here as the thing most of all to be wished for; please tell me how it is you are not afraid to die?"
The sick girl's face grew brighter still as she listened. The inquiring words were surely an answer to her prayer that Mrs. Crook's coming might be helpful to the good of her soul. So, once again, she told how the old (but ever new) story of God's love for sinners had been brought home to her own heart, and how she had been enabled to see her own sinfulness and need of a Saviour, and how she had found one in Jesus.
She spoke of His life, His love, His death, His tender compassion for a lost and ruined world, His willingness to receive, His many invitations to each weary and heavy laden soul, His promise, His victory over sin, Satan, and the grave, of the glory He had laid down for a time, but which He had taken again, and which every believer should share with Him in heaven.
"Believing in His love, do you wonder, dear Mrs. Crook, that, while I feel it sweet to serve and trust Him here, I feel that it will be sweeter still to have the precious promises all fulfilled, and to be with Jesus for ever and ever? In the presence of Jesus is fulness of joy. Once there, sorrow and sighing would flee away, and I should just be looking forward to meeting again those I loved on earth, and who loved Jesus. My dear parents, my Sunday scholars, your and my little Fanny amongst the rest, and you, too, Mrs. Crook."
A groan came from the person thus addressed, and down the face that mostly had such a hard stern expression, the big tears chased each other, whilst in a voice broken by sobs she cried—
"I have never loved Jesus; I have loved nobody but myself! It would be of no use to look for me there."