Our Winnie, and The Little Match GirlEverett-Green, Evelyn
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Our Winnie, and The Little Match Girl
Everett-Green, Evelyn
Girls -- Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction
“I don’t think it is really very different, Charley. I don’t see why it
should be, except that we ought to think even more about pleasing God
than pleasing papa and mamma, though it is not very easy.”
“No, it isn’t; but I’ll think about what you’ve said, Winnie. I can’t
think where all your grown-up ideas come from. Ronald and I never
troubled our heads over such things when we were little--and we don’t
very much now for the matter of that. What is it has changed you
lately, Winnie?”
The boy looked into her face with a half-troubled, half-playful look,
which Winnie answered by a very bright smile. She did not reply, for
they had reached the church by this time; but she held Charley’s hand
very fast as he led her to the pew.
Winifred felt almost as if she were dreaming, as she sat in her
accustomed nook beside her mother, and looked round the grand old
church, whose every detail was as familiar to her eyes as were the
pictures and panelling of her nursery walls.
It was only six weeks since she had sat there last--only six
weeks--but what a long, long time it seemed to the child!
It was almost like heaven the little girl thought when the organ began
to play. The sunshine streaming through the coloured windows, seemed
like a halo of glory. Everything was very solemn, very beautiful, and
very peaceful. Winifred said again and again in her heart:
“I am so glad God let me come once again.”
Shadows of the darting swallows crossed the sunny windows now and
again. Yes, the swallows never forgot her, Winifred thought, and the
swallows were always fond of flying round the church. Dreamily the
child recalled some verse of Holy Writ, which told how the swallows had
made a nest in the sanctuary of the God of Hosts.
“I know God loves the swallows. I know it is He who takes care of them
when they go, and shows them the way to go. He is sure--oh quite, quite
sure to take care of me too.”
The clergyman’s text seemed to chime in peculiarly happily with the
little girl’s thoughts:
“Suffer little children to come unto Me; for of such is the kingdom of
heaven.”
Winifred looked up into her mother’s face and smiled. Mrs. Digby
pressed the little hand that was slipped into hers, and her eyes
sparkled through a mist of tears as she smiled back.
Winifred walked home between her two brothers, who seemed very pleased
and proud of their charge.
All three children were very merry and happy together, and Ronald built
fine castles in the air of all the things they would do in the future,
when Winnie should be strong and well again.
Charley, with all the hopefulness of a boy’s nature, joined in eagerly,
and Winifred listened and smiled, and took her share in the talk, and
she felt herself so strong and well that she wondered dreamily to
herself whether she had made a mistake all this time, whether perhaps
she would see the swallows go and come back again after all, without
having herself to take an unknown journey into a far-off land.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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