cotton dress, as well as her pale, meagre face, with its bright hazel
eyes gleaming from under the tangled brown hair, showed evident signs
of poverty and neglect. She was a stranger there, having only recently
come to Ashleigh, and had been found wandering about, a Sunday or two
before, by Miss Preston, who had coaxed her into the Sunday school,
and had kept her in her own class until she should become a little
more familiar with scenes so strange and new. Curiosity and wonder
seemed at first to absorb all her faculties, and her senses seemed so
evidently engrossed with the novelty of what she saw around her, that
her teacher could scarcely hope she took in any of the instruction
which in the most simple words she tried to impress on her wandering
mind. And so very ignorant was she of the most elementary truths of
Christianity, that Miss Preston scarcely dared to ask her the simplest
question, for fear of drawing towards her the wondering gaze of her
more favoured classmates, who, accustomed from infancy to hear of a
Saviour's love and sacrifice for sin, could scarcely comprehend how
any child,

"Born in Christian lands,
And not a heathen or a Jew,"

could have grown up to nearly their own age, ignorant of things which
were familiar to them as household words.

Lucy and Bessie, in their happy ignorance and inexperience, little
dreamed how many thousands in Christian cities full of stately
churches, whose lofty spires seem to proclaim afar the Christianity of
the inhabitants, grow up even to manhood and womanhood with as little
knowledge of the glorious redemption provided to rescue them from
their sin and degradation as if they were sunk in the thickest