“Det.”
This was not quite true; but then Holdsworth, who knew nothing of children, was ignorant that little infants will borrow their answers from your voice or face, so that to get an affirmative from them you have only to speak or look affirmatively.
“Does mamma teach Nelly to pray?”
“Det. Nelly pray.”
And, to prove how well she could pray, she put her two hands together, hung down her head, and whispered:
“Dod bless dear mamma and Nelly. Dod bless little Nelly’s dear papa.”
She looked up coyly, as though ashamed.
Dear reader, smile not at these simple words, nor think them puerile. When we behold a little child praying, we know how the angels worship God.
A sob broke from Holdsworth as she ceased. Who was little Nelly’s dear papa but he? His wife’s love had dictated that prayer, and it was their child who told him of her love. Ah! God had deigned to hear that prayer, whispered by a wife’s heart through the lips of her infant, and had blessed him with this knowledge of her devotion, and had brought him from afar to know it.
No; not want of love had made her faithless to his memory. Faithless she was not—she could not be if her heart nightly spoke to God of him through her child.