“MOTHER, please let us sit up to hear the bells tonight,” said little Jane.
“No, dear, it would be much too late —they don’t ring till midnight. Go to bed like good children, and you can get up as early as you like in the morning,” her mother replied.
Jane lay awake a long time, thinking of the bells that would ring in the New Year. She heard the wind whistling about the house and then there was a slight lull in the noise, and Jane was sure she heard a low cry. Again she listened and again she heard the cry. “That was the voice of a child, I’m sure,” she exclaimed as she ran to look out of the window. All was dark, but presently she thought she could see a tiny dark figure crouching on the doorstep below her window.
Together with her mother Jane went to the door and there was a little girl, sobbing and crying as if her heart would break. They placed her by a comfortable fire and when warmed, little Sue, for that was her name, told them her story.
Her mother was dead, and her father, who was a traveling peddler, cared little for his small daughter. He had met another man that night as they were leaving the town, and he had told her to run on, and he would soon overtake her. But she had run on very fast, afraid that her father would be drunk; then he was always cross and sometimes beat her for nothing. The poor little girl went a long way in the darkness and storm, but at last she was so tired that when she saw the light in the window, she went to it and managed to reach the doorway. There she fell down crying on the step.
“Oh, Mother,” said Jane, “we can keep her tonight, can’t we? Tomorrow is New Year’s day, you know.”
“Yes, dear, we couldn’t send the poor child away from our door in such weather and at this hour of the night.”
“And, Mother,” said Jane again, “won’t the Lord Jesus take any kindness we do for her as if it was done to Him?”
“Ye Jane, we’ll do it for His sake,” replied her mother.
Next morning Sue woke early and could not remember where she was. But when she was dressed in some of Jane’s clothes, no one would have known her for the little girl who had lain crying on the steps the night before.
Jane and her little brother Harry weren’t long in finding out that their little friend knew nothing of the Lord Jesus and His love for her. So they told her all they knew. Little Sue listened carefully.
“But if Jesus was so happy in heaven,” she asked, “why did he come here to be a baby? It’s not pleasant to be a child—I don’t like it.”
“But it wasn’t to please Himself He came,” answered Jane. “It was because He loved us He came to die on Calvary’s cross. And He wants us to give Him our hearts and He will wash them whiter than snow in His precious blood. Then we can go to be with Him in His beautiful home above the sky.”
“And He went through all that,” said Sue, “and gave up His life at last that we might go to live in heaven? I want to see Jesus, because He did so much for me, and He knows what it is to be a child.”
Sue’s father was glad to leave her with her new friends and he left that town saying she could stay there.
Sue was very happy and her heart was full of love to her kind friends and most of all to the Lord Jesus. But she never grew strong and well. When another New Year’s eve came, little Sue was dying. Jane and her mother watched beside her.
“Why was she sent to us just for one year, until we grew so fond of her?” Jane asked her mother.
“I think you can answer that question, dear,” replied her mother.
“Yes, I know,” said Jane, “she had never heard of Jesus and God sent her to us so that we might tell her. Don’t you think that’s it, Mother?”
“I do, and we could not hold her back from Him when we remember that He gave us His own Son,” replied Mother.
Suddenly a loud and joyous peel of bells broke the stillness. The sound roused the dying child and opening her eyes, she gazed upward with a smile and said, “They’re ringing for me. I must go.”
ML-01/10/1960