for I don't want him."

"Why, Hepsa; how wicked you are! You shall not talk so!" almost shrieked Genevieve. The tears came fast into her eyes, she was so grieved to hear Hepsa talk in that way.

"But I'm not wicked!" retorted Hepsa indignantly. "I don't know who God is. Why should I? He never comes to see me. I suppose he comes to see you, and is some great person; while I am poor and live in a mean house, and nobody comes to see me, of course." Hepsa looked away from Genevieve's blue frock, and seemed to be searching for something away down the street.

Genevieve could not sit still any longer, but, rising, she remonstrated with Hepsa in this manner:

"God is not a man, Hepsa; and he goes into poor houses as often as into rich ones."

Hepsa looked very sharply upon little Genevieve as she replied,

"Ha! Don't you be telling me stories; why don't I see him ever, I'd like to know? Haven't I got eyes?"

"I don't know," said Genevieve, doubtfully. "Father was reading this morning about people who had eyes, but could not see."

Hepsa looked at her a moment, and then nodded her head towards her, and said, speaking low as to a third person, "She's cracked a little, I think;" then, as she looked towards the fence, she remembered the garden which was behind it, and asked Genevieve for some flowers. But Genevieve only said "O, yes," and went on to say, "Of course you can't see God, Hepsa! He lives in the skies."

"I shouldn't think he would come down here, then. I wouldn't!"

"But, Hepsa, God loves us; then, too, he is everywhere at once."

"Mercy!" said Hepsa to herself, in a low tone. "Worse and worse!"

"And he made everything you see, Hepsa, and a great deal more beside," continued Genevieve.

"There, there!" said Hepsa, impatiently; "don't talk any more; it sounds odd." Genevieve looked at Hepsa, and the wild, petulant look of

her face grieved and shocked her so much, that she burst into tears.

"What is the matter?" said Hepsa. "I thought you were going to get me the flowers."

"And so I will," said Genevieve, wiping up her tears as well as she could; and she ran into the garden, and picked a large bunch of flowers. There were the sweet mignonette and heliotrope, the pink verbena, and the beautiful white scented verbena, the gay phlox, the pure candytuft, bits of lemon blossoms, and the faithful pansies. It was such a beautiful bunch as to melt poor Hepsa's heart to gratitude.

"I do think I should love to kiss you," she said to Genevieve, "if my face were not so dirty, and you look so clean."

"I don't care!" said Genevieve, and so she kissed Hepsa and said, "Hepsa, I wish you would never again talk so about God, for I love him very dearly, and so do my father and mother."

Hepsa began to think Genevieve was not crazy, and so she became more serious.

"But did you never read about Him, Hepsa?" asked Genevieve.

"No, indeed; I can't read at all!" exclaimed Hepsa, astonished at Genevieve's questions.

"Not read! Why, Hepsa, why don't you go to school?"

"I can't; mother keeps me at home to tend the baby while she goes to washing."

A bright thought came into Genevieve's little head.

"Where do you live?" she asked.

"O, away down that lane, the other side of the village! I work nearly all the time, some way or other."

"Have you any father?"

"Yes;" and Hepsa looked as though she did not love him better than she loved Tom.

"May I teach you to read?" asked Genevieve, looking into Hepsa's eyes entreatingly. The child turned away her head as she answered,

"I haven't any time. I have to stay at home."

"But," pursued Genevieve, "I'll come down to your house, and bring some books, and help

you tend the baby. O! don't you love the baby?"

"No! he is too cross," was the crusty reply.

"But, he is a baby; he don't know any better."

"That don't make any difference."

"Yes it does, too; your big brother knew better than to kill your pretty pussy, and that is why it was so naughty in him to do it." This was a new kind of argument for Hepsa; but she thought over it a moment, and then told her little teacher she thought she might be right. "I almost wish you would come to teach me to read. I don't know but I might like it; and then it would be rather good to see you. Now, are you sure there is such a person as God?" said Hepsa, glancing at Genevieve from the corners of her eyes.

"Of course I am, Hepsa; who do you think made the sky and the ground, the trees and grass?"

"I don't know," replied Hepsa.

"And the sun and the moon, and the stars," continued Genevieve, with a mysterious tone. Hepsa shook her head by way of saying no.

"And all the fathers and mothers and children?" at which question Hepsa looked so perplexed.

"I asked mother once," she said, musingly, "who made all these things; but she told me I'd better be minding the cradle. I guess she didn't know; but I've always had spells of wondering about it."

Genevieve looked very gravely at Hepsa as she said,

"It was God who made all these things."

"Well, I don't know but it was," replied Hepsa.

"But I know it was; the Bible says so, and father and mother say so, too; beside, I feel it in my heart, when I see the sun and the flowers, and everything looks so pretty."

"Do you?" cried Hepsa, seeming to feel a new interest in her companion. "I wonder if you ever hear pretty voices in the trees when the wind blows, and in the night when it is warm, and you are looking up to the moon, and see the light that comes down through the holes in the sky, does something great seem to come close to you?"

"Why, yes, Hepsa, ever so many times, and I think it is God. And when Katie leaves me to go to sleep, and it is all dark, I know God comes then, for I feel him all around, and the room seems so big—bigger than it ever did before, bigger than the garden, bigger than the fields, bigger than the sky. I can't tell you how big."

"O, well—and—what did you say your name was?" asked Hepsa.

"Genevieve;" and she pronounced it very slowly.

"It is rather odd," said Hepsa, trying to repeat the name; "but I want to know if you ever laid down on the ground when it rained, and listened."

"No!"

"Well, it is real beautiful; in the grass, it sounds like bells—it sounds better where the grass is tall."

"I wish I could hear it," said Genevieve, sadly; "but my mother wouldn't like to have me lie on the ground when it rained."

"How would she know it," asked Hepsa, "if you didn't tell her?"

"Why, Hepsa, I shouldn't want to if she wouldn't like it—I shouldn't want to at all."

"I suppose, then, she won't let you come to hear me read?"

"O, yes she will, I know! I'll ask her, and she will kiss me, and say yes."

So Hepsa told her where she lived, and Genevieve went into the house, and Hepsa went home, feeling very happy about the flowers, and thinking of the things her new friend had told her.

"She says I must love Tom, and that is so queer; but if the God who gave me Tom, is the One who comes so near to me sometimes, I'll try; and, perhaps, if I hadn't called Tom such names this morning, he wouldn't have killed my poor cat." So Genevieve's words had sunk into Hepsa's heart already.

Genevieve went to her mother, and told her what a strange little girl she had found that morning, and that she had