'What is repentance, mammie dear?'

'It means being sorry for what you've done, Rosalie darling, and hating
yourself for it, and wishing never to do wrong again.'

'Then, mammie, if you need repentance, you must be like the _one_
sheep, not like the ninety-nine.'

'Yes, child, I'm a lost sheep, there's no doubt about that; I've gone very
far astray,--so far that I don't suppose I shall ever get back again; it's
much easier to get wrong than to get right; it's a _very, very_ hard
thing to find the right road when you've once missed it; it doesn't seem
much use my trying to get back, I have such a long way to go.'

'But, mammie dear, isn't it just like the sheep?'

'What do you mean, Rosalie darling?'

'Why, the sheep couldn't find its way back, could it, mammie? sheep never
can find their way. And this sheep didn't walk back; did it? He carried it
on His shoulder, like my picture; I don't suppose it would seem so very far
when He carried it.'

Rosalie's mother made no answer when her child said this, but she seemed to
be thinking about it. She sat looking thoughtfully out of the window; much,
very much was passing in her mind. Then Rosalie closed the Testament, and,
wrapping it carefully in the paper in which it had been kept so many years,
she hid it away in the box again.