"What if he has?" she asked gently. "Would you care so very much?"
"Care!" exclaimed David, and his expression startled her. "Care!—whether our Messiah has come, and we have not known him, and have injured him and rejected him?"
"But that is just what Isaiah said would be."
"Don't!" said David. "I can't bear it! If that is true, there will be such a cry as Zechariah said, and I will begin it. But I don't believe it, Matilda; it cannot be. I will not believe it."
He threw down his book and walked up and down the room with folded arms and a brow black as night. Hardly a boy's action, but neither was it a boy's feeling which possessed him just then. Matilda looked on, very sorry, very much awed, and entirely at a loss to know what to say. She consulted her Bible again and found a passage which she wished to shew him; but she had to wait for the chance. David walked up and down, up and down, restlessly.
"I can't make it out!" he exclaimed. "It confuses me. If that were true, then all our whole nation have been wrong, all these years; and we have lost everything; the promise made to Abraham and all."
"But Jesus will fulfil all the promises," said Matilda gently.
"To those who disowned him?" David asked almost fiercely.
"I think he will," said Matilda. "Why the first Christians were some of those very Jews."
"How can that be?" said David standing still and looking at her.