"I deserve to be punished, I know, George. I have been perfectly selfish. I have thought more, all my life long, about dress and vanity and pleasure than about anything else in the world. I have been a member of the church and have had a class in the Sunday-school, and I have thought myself a very good Christian; but I have really occupied all my life in thinking how I should contrive to look prettier and to dress better than others, and to secure my personal gratification. And I have always thought everything a nuisance that has stood in my way. When the dear baby came, I have been thinking ever since he was born how I should dress him and make him look pretty—and now the body that I thought so much of—" She stopped and sobbed again.
"Don't make yourself so unhappy, my darling sister," said George tenderly, as he rose and kissed her.
She seemed soothed, and presently ceased weeping.
"And for my Christmas gift this year, I have that little grave."
"Dear Belle, you must not be too hard upon yourself; the gifts of God are as many as the sands upon the sea-shore, and one honest sight of one's self is a Christmas gift worth having. Even if we think we are punished, his chastisements are always gifts, if we know how to receive them; my dear sister, isn't it so?"
"I have heard so times enough from the pulpit," said Belle, through her tears; "but you know, George, I have never thought about those things. And then, my baby's soul, which I cared so little about—dear George, do you really think it makes any difference?"
"What, dear?"
"Whether he was baptized or not?"
"I don't think anything about it, my darling sister; I know that it makes all the difference between going instantly to the heaven of heavens, where God is, and staying, perhaps for ever and ever, in a place which, though not an unhappy place, is by no means so happy as the very presence-chamber of the King of kings. But you need not grieve about that; for he was baptized, and your little darling has gone to keep a joyful Christmas in heaven."
And then he told Belle how he came down that morning, and how Mrs. Reilly had baptized the child.