Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/183

Rh being read, her face was a study. She had known but dimly of God and of Christ, and she had never in her life said a prayer until she had knelt by her new mother's side on the first evening of our arrival.

The next morning, immediately after prayers, we were all startled by this question from her:— "Why don't you go into the room where God is? Is it that one?" pointing to the closed door on the opposite side of the hall.

The little, ignorant child had felt to her heart's core the same atmosphere which had so impressed us when we first heard Parson Allen pray. She felt, as we knew, that he was speaking to some one very near. Every fiber of motherhood in Mrs. Allen's heart twined around this sensitive, loving, helpless little creature.

"She seems to me like a babe," she said; "like a babe found in the wilderness. I hope we may be guided to nurture her aright, for I believe she is a child of very rare gifts. She has not known the name of Christ, but she has lived his life, and I have a conviction that she is one of his chosen ones."

No danger but that Ally would be nurtured aright in the house of which Dorothy Allen's sweet soul was the central warmth, and the man she loved was the light and strength. I have seen many households, households of wealth and culture, households of simple and upright living, but I have