“Why don't you come down here?” urged Nan. “There are plenty of houses.”
“But the bother of it is there are plenty of people in town, and the preacher must stay near the people. It is more beautiful and wonderful, you know, to be able to help a soul struggle up toward high-water mark, than even to watch the tide come in as we are doing. But I think I must be talking quite over your head. Now that we are friends, perhaps you will not mind telling me what you were thinking about when I so rudely interrupted you?”
“Do you see that schooner, away off there?” Nan answered. “Well, when you came it was right in front of me, and I was pretending it was sailing away to a beautiful island with a crowd of poor city children on board, who had never been very well, or had a very happy time, and I pretended they were already beginning to look fresh and rosy with the salt breeze blowing in their faces; and I made believe that some of the children had a glass, and were looking here at me on the beach, and that some of them thought I was a mermaid, and others a queer sort of a fish. Now I suppose you think those were pretty foolish thoughts, don't you?”
“Not a bit of it. It is like a fairy story, only better. But before you began to build a castle in the air, I see you built a little one here in the sand. I suppose you have peopled this with a lot of queer little people of your own too.”
“No,” said Nan, honestly, “I don't make up things much, except when I am just looking out to sea.”
“Have you ever thought, Nan,” said Mr. Vale, earnestly, as he banked up a falling wall of her castle with his hand, “that your own life is a sort of little castle, wonderfully made, richly furnished, beautiful and hopeful to look upon? It is fitting that only One should live in that fair house—He who is purity and goodness and truth Himself. Ask Him to come and dwell within you, to look out of your eyes, to hear with your ears, to speak through your lips, to guide your hands and your feet.”
“You mean Jesus, don't you?” asked Nan, looking frankly into his face with sweet simplicity.
“Yes, my little friend, I do.”
“Well, it is just like a sermon.”
“But you said, you know, that you would like to hear me preach.”