The little girl hesitated, afraid of offending, yet accustomed to speak out the truth; then timidly said, looking down on the floor, "You know, Walter, that when you talk with me, you often begin with 'Lord! or God bless my soul!' or you say 'The Lord knows,' when really I do not think, I am afraid, that you are not considering at all what you are saying." Viner was not yet aware of this habit in Walter, for the boy had been shy and reserved in his presence, and had not spoken out so freely before him as when alone with his gentle little daughter. Walter coloured, and tried to laugh. "You are very precise," said he. "I hope that I have not made you vexed with me," whispered Nelly, drawing nearer to him, and laying her small hand on his. "I hope that I have not said anything unkind." "No, no," replied Walter hastily. "I dare say that you are all right; but these things are so new to me—I never thought at all of them before. You can hardly imagine how different I am from you—you have never taken God's name in vain in all your life." "Oh! but I have—often," murmured Nelly, again looking down. "When? I am certain that you never swear." "When I pray," answered Nelly, speaking very low, so that Walter could scarcely catch the words. "Surely, if you are ever out of harm's way, it's when you are praying," exclaimed Walter. "Not if I am thinking of something else all the time. Father has told me that we may say prayers and yet never pray, and that this is taking the Lord's name in vain." Walter sighed; for the first time he felt how difficult it must be to attain to that "holiness without which no man shall see the Lord." After the wild life that he had led, the wicked scenes that he had witnessed, Viner's dwelling seemed to him the home of purity itself; and Nelly, a little cherub all spotless and holy, who never had known anything of sin. It was with a feeling to which he had been a stranger before, a sense of weakness, a consciousness of guilt, that he knelt that evening by the little child's side, and repeated after her father the words of the Lord's Prayer: "HALLOWED BE THY NAME." [Illustration] CHAPTER III. "Thy kingdom come." THE next day was Saturday, on the evening of which Viner, as usual, cast up his accounts, and reckoned his gains during the week. It was the amusement of Nelly, seated upon his knee, to arrange pence and half pence into little shilling heaps, and separate the sum always laid aside for the rent, and that required to purchase the next week's stock. The little child felt herself useful in doing this, and aspired to the time when she could manage the big book, and sum up all the figures like father. But this evening there was a cloud over her sunny face, and she looked sadly at the small amount of money that remained, when she had put aside what was wanted for rent and stock.