"Huldah, how is your father to-day?"
"Not as well as he was yesterday; but he is asleep now, and will be better when he wakes."
"Has the doctor been here to-day?"
"No, he has not been here since Sunday."
Edna stood for a while watching the labored breathing of the sleeper, and, putting her hand on Huldah's head, she whispered: "Do you want me to read to you this evening? It is late, but I shall have time for a short chapter."
"Oh! please do, if it is only a few lines. It will not wake him."
The child rose, spread out her hands, and groped her way across the room to a small table, whence she took an old Bible.
The two sat down together by the western window, and Edna asked: "Is there any particular chapter you would like to hear?"
"Please read about blind Bartimeus sitting by the roadside, waiting for Jesus."
Edna turned to the verses and read in a subdued tone for some moments. In her eager interest Huldah slid down on her knees, rested her thin hands on her companion's lap and raised her sweet face, with its wide, vacant, sad, hazel eyes.
When Edna read the twenty-fourth verse of the next chapter, the small hands were laid upon the page to arrest her attention.
"Edna, do you believe that? 'What things soever you desire, when ye pray believe that ye receive them, AND YE SHALL HAVE THEM!' Jesus said that: and if I pray that my eyes may be opened, do you believe I shall see? They tell me that--that pa will not live. Oh! do you think if I pray day and night, and if I believe, and oh! I do believe, I will believe! do you think Jesus will let me see him--my father--before he dies? If I could only see his dear face once, I would be willing to be blind afterward. All my life I have felt his face, and I knew it by my fingers; but oh! I can't feel it in the grave! I have been praying so hard ever since the doctor said he must die; praying that Jesus would have mercy on me, and let me see him just once. Last night I dreamed Christ came and put his hands on my eyes, and said to me, too, 'Thy faith hath made thee whole'; and I waked up crying, and my own fingers were pulling my eyes open; but it was all dark, dark. Edna, won't you help me pray! And do you believe I shall see him?"