"But she must!" cried Angelika angrily.
"She must? How can we believe anything because we must? It is not possible," said Ernestine, and she thought Angelika very silly. Suddenly it occurred to her that the pastor was no wiser when he said that we must have faith and that it was a sin not to believe. What if you could not,--what was the use of that must?
"Ernestine, don't stare so at nothing," said Angelika, interrupting her reverie. "Just look how straight my doll can sit, all alone, without anything to lean against! Oh, just give her one kiss; she is your namesake--I christened her Ernestine."
"No, I don't want to,--it is nothing but a lump of leather, it cannot feel, and I will not kiss anything that is not alive and does not feel!"
"Oh, Ernestine, don't say that. She is not alive now, but perhaps she may get alive. Mamma told me once of a man in Greece, called Pygmalion, who made a marble doll for himself, and loved it so dearly that it grew warm and came to life. And I believe that if I should love my doll dearly she might get alive; and I am sure I shall love her very dearly! She can say 'papa' and 'mamma' already, which Herr Pygmalion's doll could not do at all; and in time I shall perhaps bring her on, just as he did his!"
And she clasped the "lump of leather" to her little heart, gazed tenderly and hopefully into its blue glass eyes, and was quite content.
Ernestine looked at her with mournful wonder; she understood now that "Faith gives peace," and she envied the child her happiness.
"Would you not rather have a puppy or a kitten?" she asked gently. "It could eat and drink, and you could feed it, and it would understand what was said to it, and run after you, and love you? Would not that be nicer?"
A shade of sorrow passed over Angelika's rosy face, like a cloud over the sun. "Oh," she sighed, "we have a little dog; but I cannot feed it; it does not eat nor drink!"
"Why not? Is it sick?"