Page:The pilgrim's progress by John Bunyan every child can read (1909).djvu/282

266 should leave us in our pilgrimage: you have been so faithful and so loving to us, you have fought so stoutly for us, you have been so hearty in counselling of us, that I shall never forget your favor towards us.

Then said Mercy, "Oh that we might have thy company to our journey's end! How can such poor women as we hold out in a way so full of troubles as this way is, without a friend and defender?"

Then said James, the youngest of the boys, "Pray, sir, be persuaded to go with us, and help us, because we are so weak, and the way so dangerous as it is."

I am at my Lord's commandment. If he shall allot me to be your guide quite through, I will willingly wait upon you. But here you failed at first; for when he bid me come thus far with you, then you should have begged me of him to have gone quite through with you, and he would have granted your request. However, at present I must withdraw; and so, good Christiana, Mercy, and my brave children, adieu.

Then the Porter, Mr. Watchful, asked Christiana of her country and of her kindred. And she said, "I come from the City of Destruction. I am a widow woman, and my husband is dead: his name was Christian, the pilgrim."

"How!" said the Porter, "was he your husband?"

"Yes," said she, "and these are his children,