Chapter 7
“O dear,” sighed Ellen Irving, as she put down her book, “how dreary and lonesome it makes the house seem! I do wish brother could get well.”
“I’m afraid he will never get well,” said the wife of the invalid, a tear stealing down her cheek. “To think one year ago, he was all life and animation. Let me see, we were in Naples weren’t we?”
“Yes, and what glorious times we used to have. O, dear; and it is so gloomy now! I can’t think of one cheerful thing, it’s dull in the morning and dull at night, and the world seems like a grave. Even out on the street I can’t forget. Lilly, child, what are you doing?” she exclaimed as the little girl, her face flushed and her hair flung in disorder, appeared at the door dragging a large book beautifully gilded and shining.
“It was so heavy,” said Lilly still tugging at her task. “I tried to lift it, and then I called Sarah, but she wouldn’t come. You take it up, won’t you? No, not on the table, on your lap,” she added, as the young lady was about to transfer the volume to the table.
“For pity’s sake, child,” said her mother pausing before she left the room “what are you going to do with that great big Bible?”
“Why, I want Auntie to find something for me,” said the child, who, after seeing the volume placed where she wished, had seated herself at Ellen Irving’s feet, and, with folded hands waited.
“And what shall I find?” asked her youthful Aunt, looking smilingly into the anxious face of the child.
“Where it says, ‘Come unto Me.’ The little sick boy told father, and I want to find it so that father can read it.”
“You strange child,” said the Aunt, blushing, “how can I tell you where it is?”
“Why, don’t you know? Haven’t you read the Bible?” Ellen turned the leaves abstractly.
“Isn’t it somewhere in the New Testent?” she asked her sister-in-law.
“I suppose so, though I am sure I don’t know. I read everything else,” replied the fashionable mother. “I don’t want Henry to get moping and gloomy as I am sure he will, if he keeps on talking about the child.”
“Why, how strange,” exclaimed Ellen, “I have opened the book right there! It is in the eleventh chapter of Matthew, and the 28th verse. Well, Lilly I’ve found it, what now?”
“O!” and Lilly darted from her seat, but soon returned, bringing a hymn book, very large and equally as beautiful as the Bible. “Now, please to find the hymn where it says,
‘Jesus can make a dying bed.’”
“Bless me, child, you make me neous,” said the young lady, shuddering, “what do you want to hear about dying beds?”
“But poor little sick Danny sings it when Jesus comes to him in the night,” persisted the child, “and if father learns it, perhaps he will sing it, for I guess by-and-by Jesus will also come to him, and make him happy.”
“Lilly Irving! what are you talking about?” asked the young lady, a strange feeling creeping through her nerves and around her heart.
“About Jesus,” was the prompt reply.
“Well—I’m sure it’s very well on Sunday, but I don’t see what put it into your head to talk of such things now. Hadn’t you better go and play?”
“No,” said Lilly just as promptly, “I told father I’d find him the place of ‘Come unto Me,’ and, ‘Jesus can make,’ and now you just look for the hymn, please, while I go for Sarah to carry up the book.” Away she went, and that blessed name ran through Ellen’s brain “Jesus”!
“Jesus! That name is love,
Jesus, Our Lord!
Jesus, all names above,
Jesus, the Lord!
Thou, Lord, our all must be;
Nothing that’s good have we,
Nothing apart from Thee,
Jesus, our Lord!”
To be Continued
ML 08/03/1941