“I hope you will, dear,” said Lucy, touched and gratified, and she kissed her little cousin affectionately, looking pityingly at the pale, delicate face and fragile form.  She had always wished to have a little sister of her own, and her heart was quite disposed to take the little girl into a sister’s place.  She drew her closer, and after talking a little about the doll, she said: 

“Does Amy love the good, kind Saviour, who came to die for her?”

The child looked up with a puzzled expression.

“Jesus, you know,” added Lucy, thinking that name might be more familiar.

“That is Jesus that my hymn is about.  Nurse taught me, ’Gentle Jesus, meek and mild.’”

“Yes.  Well, don’t you love Him, Amy?  He loves you very much.”

“Does He love me?” asked Amy.  “How do you know?”

“Because He says so.”

“But He is up in heaven.  Nurse said my little brother is up there with Him.”

It was always “nurse.”  Amy did not seem to owe much knowledge of that kind to any one else.  Lucy tried to explain as simply as possible that, although the Saviour is in heaven, He is as really near us as when He was on earth; and that we have still in the Bible the very words that He spoke while yet among men.

“Are they in there?” asked Amy, looking at Lucy’s Bible.

“Yes, dear.  You can’t read yet, I suppose?”

“Oh no!  The doctor says I mustn’t learn for a long while.”

“Then I will read to you some of the things that Jesus said.  Would you like that?”

“Oh yes!” said Amy; and Lucy read the account of our Saviour blessing the little children.  She was pleased and surprised at the quiet attention and deep interest with which Amy listened, and mentally resolved to try to lead her to know more of that blessed Saviour, of whom as yet she knew so little.  Here was some work provided for her already, she thought, and the feeling made her happier than she had been since she left home.

The evening passed away much as the former one had gone, except that it was varied by the presence of visitors, among whom was a gentleman who, Stella privately informed her cousin, was an “admirer” of Sophy’s.

“But it’s no use, if he knew it, for you know she’s engaged already to Mr. Langton.  He’s such a handsome, nice fellow, and has a large plantation in the South, where he lives.  I know she’s as fond of him as she can be, though she doesn’t like people to think so.  Look, now, how she sings for Mr. Austin!  I’m afraid he’ll think she likes him.”

Sophy was by no means indifferent to any admiration, though she was, as Stella had said, very much attached to her betrothed; and it did not quite coincide with Lucy’s ideas of love and lovers, founded, it must be confessed, chiefly on books, to observe the seeming pleasure and animation with which Sophy received the attentions and compliments of this young man, whose partiality for her was so plain.