Boys -- Juvenile fiction; London (England) -- Juvenile fiction; Runaway children -- Juvenile fiction
"Please, Sir, me an' Willie wants to find Yer. Make us good boys,
an' show us the way."
"Say 'men, Bob," said Willie, "like the lady did."
And Bob said "'men."
CHAPTER IV
A VISITOR FOR WILLIE
What made Mrs. Blair sit up late that night, watching the fire, instead of
going to bed quickly as she usually did? Willie's question had taken her
back in thought to the time when she was a little girl. She remembered the
lovely village where she was born; she fancied herself a girl again,
running about the sweet-scented lanes and the green fields. She could see
the honeysuckle all out in bloom, as it climbed over the cottage door and
peeped in at the windows; but, most of all, she thought of her mother and
the prayer she taught her to say every night as she knelt at her knee.
But her mother was dead, and she had not been near the village for many
years. In that time she had forgotten all the lessons her mother had tried
to teach her, and now when little Willie wanted her to show him the way to
Jesus she was not able to do so. It was many years since she had taken the
name of Jesus upon her lips. She had been a hard-working woman all her
life, and she had no time to think about Him. But now she wished she
had. She would have been glad if she could have told little Willie what he
wanted to know.
From this time the boys never forgot to speak to Jesus, as Willie called
it, every morning and evening. They went to the mission services regularly
every week, and Miss Elton and her brother began to take a great interest
in the children. The boys listened eagerly to every word that was said,
and carried it faithfully home to Mrs. Blair, for she, poor woman,
seemed quite as anxious to find Jesus as the children had been.
Willie's "pretty lady" had quite won the children's hearts, so that Willie
had lost all his shyness with her; and as for the lady herself, she
delighted to bear him chatter. Bob told her all about their life in
Primrose Place, and on the streets since, and what a good friend Mrs. Blair
had been to them.
"Why, you see," she said, "Jesus has been taking care of you all the time;
only you did not know it."
"'As 'e?" said Bob wonderingly.
"Of course He has," was the reply. "Don't you see how He has let you take
care of Willie? All the kind, loving thoughts that you have about are put
into your mind by Jesus. It was He made Mrs. Blair so kind to you.
She wouldn't have looked after you so well if He had not put the thoughts
into her head."
So, little by little, the minds of the children began to open, and they
understood something of the way in which Jesus loved them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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