"
That girl was as poor as Cecile herself. Nay, indeed, she was much
poorer. How white was her thin face, how ragged her shabby gown! But
then, again, how triumphant was her voice as she sang! What a happy
light filled her sunken eyes!
There was no doubt at all that Jesus loved this poor girl; and if He
loved her, why might He not love Cecile too? Yes, He surely had a
great and loving heart, capable of taking in everybody; for Cecile's
stepmother, though she was not _very_ nice, had smiled when that
little story of the poor girl on the doorstep had been told to her;
had smiled and seemed comforted, and had repeated the words, "Jesus
loves even me," softly over to herself when she was dying.
Cecile, too, now looking back over many things, remembered her own
father. Cecile's father, Maurice D'Albert, was a Roman Catholic by
birth. He was a man, however, out of whose life religion had slipped.
During his wife's lifetime, and while he lived on his little farm in
the Pyrenees, he had done as his neighbors did, gone to confession,
and professed himself a good Catholic; but when trouble came to him,
and he found his home in the bleaker land of England, there was found
to be no heart in his worship. He was an amiable, kind-hearted man,
but he forgot the religious part of life. He went neither to church
nor chapel, and he brought up his children like himself, practically
little heathens. Cecile, therefore, at ten years old was more
ignorant than it would be possible to find a respectable English
child.
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