was--need they?"

"Certainly not. And I needn't have been so unhappy if I had thought who
you were. But I was terribly frightened, and there I was wrong."

"Who am I, uncle?"

"Another little one of the same father as he."

"Why were you frightened, uncle?"

"I was afraid of your being frightened."

"I hardly had time to be frightened before the lady came."

"Yes; you see I needn't have been so unhappy!"

My uncle always treated me as if I could understand him perfectly. This
came, I see now, from the essential childlikeness of his nature, and from
no educational theory.

"Sometimes," he went on, "I look all around me to see if Jesus is out
anywhere, but I have never seen him yet!"

"We shall see him one day, shan't we?" I said, craning round to look into
his eyes, which were my earthly paradise. Nor are they a whit less dear
to me, nay, they are dearer, that he has been in God's somewhere, that
is, the heavenly paradise, for many a year.

"I think so," he answered, with a sigh that seemed to swell like a