Page:Her Benny - Silas K Hocking (Warne, 1890).djvu/150

126 "Perhaps the Lord will let me look at you through the gate," sobbed Joe; "but I'm afeard He won't let sich as me in."

"Oh, yes, Joe," she said, opening her eyes with such a pained look." Does you think the Lord does not love yer as much as I do? An' won't He be as glad to see yer as I shall?"

"It does look reasonable like, my purty," said Joe; "but, oh, I'm so afeard."

"'Who-so-ever,'" whispered Nelly, and again closed her eyes, while the troubled expression passed away, and the smile that Joe loved to see came back and lit up her pure spirituelle face with a wonderful beauty. And as Joe watched the smile lingering about her mouth as if loth to depart, he felt somehow as if that child had been sent of God to teach him the truth, and to lighten the burden of his dreary life by giving him a hope of heaven.

"'Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,'" he muttered to himself.

"Yes," said the nurse, coming softly to his side, "out of the mouths of babes He perfects praise."

Joe looked up in surprise. "Do you think the bairn is right?" he stammered out.

"I'm sure of it," she replied.

"But what about the elect?" said Joe, in a tone of voice that proclaimed how deeply he was agitated.

"I think the elect are 'whosoever will,'" she replied.

"So Nelly thinks," he said, and shook his head sadly, as if such news were too good to be true.