"'The cottage was soon all silence: the child no longer went singing from room to room, but she was happy, far away in the blessed land which the kind shepherd prepared for his faithful flock.'"
"'Did the little lamb go to meet her there?' I asked, as dear mamma stopped as if she had finished the story.
"'I cannot tell you, Rosa,' she answered, and fast the tears fell from her eyes. 'By the lamb I mean your little sister, and the kind shepherd is the Saviour, to whom I am to give her to-day. God only knows whether our little Lucy will reach the blessed land.'
"'But you are not going away, mamma, as the child did,' I said, my eyes, too, filling with tears, for I too well understood her meaning.
"'Perhaps not very soon,' she answered, and smiled away her tears."
Lucy was still silent, and Rosa went on, for both Harty and Lucy were earnestly listening.
"When you were carried up the aisle, dear Lucy, all in your white clothing, you seemed to me like the little lamb of which mother had spoken, and I felt that you were being received into the flock of the kind shepherd. You smiled when the water was sprinkled on your forehead, and I was so glad, for that made you seem willing to be placed in His care."
Lucy listened to the story of the child and the lamb; and when she heard its explanation her heart was full, and she inwardly resolved that she would try so to follow the Saviour here, that she might join her mother at last in His blessed land. As Rosa recalled the circumstances of her Baptism, she for the first time realized that it had really happened, that her name had been really given by her "sponsors in Baptism."
"Was I there too?" asked Harty, beginning to be restless, as there was a short pause.
"Yes, indeed! and so eager to see the ceremony that you climbed on to the seat, and leaned forward to look until you fell with a loud noise, just as the baby was being carried out of church. You always were a noisy fellow," said Rosa, as she laid her hand affectionately on her brother's clustered curls.