CHAPTER VII.

A LITTLE LOGICIAN.

IT was Sunday afternoon—an August Sunday, bright and beautiful. "Very warm," the city papers said, in the next day's report, but on Monteagle a steady wind fluttered the branches of the many trees all day, and the birds were singing merrily. Under the shadow of one of the great old trees, Effie Hammond played about according to her own sweet will; Dilly, on the grass near at hand, an open book in her lap, keeping careful guard over the small feet of her charge, all unknown to them; they thought they were free to go where they pleased, therefore their owner was happy. Hart Hammond strolling about, uncertain what to do with himself, presently came that way, stopped for a minute to tease little Effie by tickling her nose with one of the long grasses, then came and threw himself on the grass, not far from Dilly.

"What a tiresomely slow day this is! Seems to me there have been twenty-seven hours since breakfast, each of them a hundred and eighty minutes long."

Dilly smiled faintly. There was a thoughtful look on her face; in fact, a slightly troubled look which gathered again, almost before the smile had faded. "It has not seemed so very long to me," she answered gravely.

"Hasn't? What have you been about?" And he gave her face a searching glance, and saw the shadow on it.

"I went to Sunday-school this morning, and since then I have taken care of Effie, and helped Jeannette with the rooms, and done a great many little things; none of them took much time, and yet all of them together took all the time there was."

"Just so; and didn't give you a chance to see how slow it was going; nor how stupid everything was; I'd give a dollar an hour if I had something regular and sensible to do."

"Then I should think you would find it right away; there are ever so many things that seem to want doing."

Hart laughed a little; a sort of superior air, as though he realized that he was talking with a person who knew very little about the things which belonged to his world.

"What are some of them?"

"Oh! I don't know; hundreds of things which would help other people, and make the world a great deal nicer place than it is. Seems to me if I were a man, I would do a great many nice things; but I don't know, I might not. I don't do all I could now, being a little girl, and that is a sign, I suppose, that I would not be any better if I were a man. Mr. Hart, why do you suppose it is that people don't go right straight to Jesus when they feel him drawing them, and begin work for him?"

Hart Hammond rolled over a little on the grass, changing his position so that he could look full into Dilly's face, then said, with astonished emphasis,—"What!"

"Why, you know the promise He made, that if He was lifted up, He would 'draw' everybody to Him, and of course He has kept His promise; and I say, why doesn't everybody go to Him?"

She was in very intense earnest. There was no mistaking the gravity, which was almost solemnity, on her face; she went after Effie, just then, brought her from a particularly dusty spot, and established her on the grass with a new flower, then came back to her seat, and her open book. Hart, glancing at it, saw it was the Bible.

"What put that into your head?" he asked carelessly, meaning the Bible verse.

"It has been in my head all day; it was the Sunday-school lesson, you know, for to-day."

"I'm sure I did not know it. What could they make out of such a lesson as that for little chicks?"

"They made wonderful things out of it, Mr. Hart; I went to the children's building where all the very wee-est ones were; I wanted to see what would be done with them all, they were so little and cunning. I didn't know people taught such very little dots from the Bible, but they did; a real lesson. First there was an arch for the promise; then there was a picture of the world, with the cross on it up in one corner, and rays of light reaching from it all over the world; then the teacher marked off one tiny spot for Monteagle, and made dots for the little folks in her class, and told them the light from the cross was shining right on them to-day; that Jesus was drawing them to come to him; and then she said how very, very sad it was that some of them would not come."

"And they understood what she was talking about as well, I suppose, as though she had addressed them in Greek," replied skeptical Hart, smiling.

"Oh! They understood. I don't make it plain to you, I suppose, because I don't know how; but that teacher knew. She made it just as plain to those little bits of children what it was to go to Jesus, as I should make plain to Effie what I wanted if I should ask her to run to mamma in her room at the hotel. That was what astonished me so much. I always thought," said Dilly, looking down at her Bible, her cheeks growing a rosy pink, "that being a Christian was something which belonged to older people—to men and women; and that girls so young as I needn't think about such things; but that teacher talked to those little bits of children as though they were hurting the Lord Jesus every day, when they refused to think about him or try to please him; and, after all, it seems sensible, for Effie, baby as she is, makes your mother look very much troubled when she puts on that determined little look and stands perfectly still, after she has called her to come. Why shouldn't Jesus care?"

"You are getting into very deep theological waters, my small woman, I am afraid," said Hart, trying to look wise and, at the same time, unconcerned. "What is 'going to Jesus?' That is a kind of 'cant' expression which one hears a good deal of in Sunday-school; but how many of those children, do you suppose, know what it means? Effie, there, understands perfectly well when mamma calls her, that she ought to go, but this is a very different matter."

"They understood," said Dilly, confidently. "She asked all who knew what it was to go to Jesus, to raise their hands, and ever so many little bits of children raised theirs; then she questioned some of the youngest; one boy said it was to 'want to please him.' Another said it was to 'do just as you thought he would do if he were here.' Another said it was to 'turn right square around and leave all your bads behind you,' and a little bit of a girl said 'it was to love him so much that you wouldn't do anything to make him feel bad, for the world.' Oh! 'They' knew.

"Then she got them to tell of ways in which they had been called, or 'drawn,' to Jesus, and it was just wonderful to hear the little things. Some told what their fathers had said, and some spoke of their teachers, and mothers, and two boys said their little sister had asked them to 'turn over a new leaf,' and one little girl said her mamma had asked her to meet her in Heaven. My mother asked me to be sure to do that." Dilly's voice had dropped lower and lower, and with this last sentence it trembled and her eyes filled with tears.

"Well," said Hart, kindly, wanting to comfort her, "you mean to, I suppose."

"I don't know; I haven't thought much about it, only when I was sick, and then I was too miserable to think of anything, much, but myself. Oh! I meant to, some day, but that teacher told those 'little' boys and girls that they were not one of them too young to begin, and that to-day was the only time they were sure of."

"I think it is very unwise to try to scare little folks in that way," said Hart, looking wise and reproving.

"Oh! They were not scared. She did not say it in that way, only she made it plain to them that it was true; and of course it is; because, when you stop to think about it, how can anybody be sure of being here to-morrow; and even if one were sure, what is the use in waiting?"

There really seemed to be but one sensible answer to make to this; Hart thought it over for some seconds, and at last said, with a good-natured laugh, "All right; what do you wait for, then?"

"That is just it!" Dilly did not laugh, but kept her troubled look. "Why don't I say right away that I am going, from this minute, to belong to Jesus, and serve him the best I know how? Why doesn't everybody say it, Mr. Hart?"

"Well," said Hart, rolling himself over again, and settling it in his own mind that he would leave this part of the ground in a very few minutes, "the theory is, you know, that old Satan himself is at the bottom of all our wickednesses, this among the number."

"Do you suppose he is trying to manage me?" Dilly's tone was awe-stricken. "Do you really think it is Satan telling me that I don't understand enough about things to settle them; that, at least, I would better wait till I get home and see what father says?"

"Haven't a doubt but that the old fellow is interested in you, if all that is said of him is true."

"I hate to be managed by him!" said Dilly, intense scorn in her voice, and much emphasis laid on the pronoun him.

Hart was exceedingly amused. Dilly seemed to him to be the very oddest little girl in the world.

"On the whole, then," he said, rising, "perhaps, you would do well to give him the slip."

"Why, of course; everybody would, but it is so queer that we don't! Did you see the picture this morning, Mr. Hart?"

"Picture?" said Hart, sitting down again. "I saw nothing this morning, but the bed. What picture was there?"

"Why, that same man made a picture on the blackboard in the tabernacle; in the big Sunday-school, you know, after the other was over. He made the lesson all out in a picture, and a story. The story was about a desert where nothing grew, and it was very warm and very dreary; and one day an angel planted a seed, and a tree grew up, a lovely tree—the only beautiful thing in that desert world. And pilgrims came that way and rested under its shade; and it grew and grew; and these pilgrims told others about it, and more came, and at last great crowds of people were helped by that tree; and it grew on and on, and spread its branches everywhere, and its leaves cured sick people. And while he talked he made the tree larger and larger, and its branches reached out, and then suddenly, he made a cross out of it; reaching its arms out to save everybody! It was a beautiful story, Mr. Hart. I can't tell it as he did, but it just put the whole lesson into a picture; and it made me think again how strange it was that some people would not be cured. When I was sick, I 'wanted' to be cured so much; and when your mother came to say she would take me with her up here, and that it would cure me, I just cried for joy; and father cried, he was so glad. Suppose I had said I wasn't old enough to come?"

"You are quite a little logician," said Hart. And then he took himself up from the grass again, pinched Effie's cheek, pulled one of her curls and sauntered off, leaving Dilly to wonder what that last sentence meant.