"Why, Charlie, you know I'm too little," said Bessie.
"How old do you think you ought to be first, anyhow!"
"Oh, I don't know."
"I was just thinking about how nice everything is this morning, and I wonder how it was in the garden of Eden."
"Children, are you ready for Sunday school? Papa is hitching up."
"All right, mamma, we're coming," they answered, and were off together very soon.
On the way to church, no one had much to say. Charlie was sitting on the front seat with his papa, and he was the driver too, while Bessie and mamma sat on the second seat.
The church is down in the valley between the long Ringgold hill and the mountain to the east, and by the time they reached it, several other carriages were already there. The superintendent of the Sunday school had just gotten there a short time before, and all who were there were gathering in to spend a little while in singing before time for Sunday school to begin. The first hymn they sang that morning was
"Jesus, when he left the sky,
And for sinners came to die,
In his mercy passed not by
Little ones like me."
and all the other verses.