The Angel Children Part 1

The Angel Children.

by Charlotte M. Higgins.

STORIES.

HEPSA AND GENEVIEVE.

Genevieve lived in a large, handsome house, which had beautiful gardens all about it. She had no brother or sister, but she had a large play-room, filled with the nicest toys, so that a good many children who came to play in it thought she must be perfectly happy; but Genevieve had often thought how willingly she would give the room and all its playthings for a little brother of her own, whom she might take out in the garden for a walk, and watch carefully, just as her mother watched her.

One day, while she was walking in the garden, thinking of the little brother she so much wanted, who she was sure would look like her dear mother, with her blue eyes, and golden curls, what should she hear but the noise of some one crying outside the garden fence. Now, as she could not look through the fence,--for it was quite high and made of thick boards,--she ran quickly to the gate, and then round to the place where she had heard the crying. There she saw a little girl sitting upon the side-walk, with bare feet and legs, which were none of the whitest, wearing a dress of brown cloth with many tatters in it, and short black hair hanging over her face and head. Genevieve looked at her in amazement.

"Dear me!" she at last exclaimed, "where do you live?"

At this question the child stopped her crying, and pulling away her hair with both of her hands from her face, disclosed a pair of large black eyes, which, swollen with tears, regarded little Genevieve with sly, sleepy wonder.

It was not wonderful she should be astonished to behold so neat and pretty a child close by her side. Genevieve wore a blue frock and white ap.r.o.n, neat stockings and slippers, and pantalettes with broad ruffles.

So she only gazed at Genevieve, without dreaming of answering her question.

"What is your name?" asked Genevieve.

"What is yours?" demanded the child.

"Mine is Genevieve. Tell me what yours is?"

"Hepsa. Do you live in there?" and Hepsa nodded her head towards the fence. Genevieve replied that she did.

"But tell me why you were crying?" she asked.

"Because Tom beat my black cat this morning and threw her into the pond, and she was everything I had." Hepsa burst into tears again, and little Genevieve's heart was so filled with compa.s.sion, that she sat down upon the dirty ground, at the side of the afflicted child, without ever thinking of the blue frock and clean pantalettes she was soiling.

"O, dear, dear!" she cried, shocked at Tom's cruelty. "How wicked he was! What made him do so,--your brother, too?" Genevieve thought in her heart that little brother, of whom she so often thought, never would have done such a thing.

Hepsa looked up half angrily, as she replied:

"You needn't keep telling me he is my brother! I'm sure I don't want him to be, and wish he wasn't. I don't love him a bit, he always plagues me so much."

"O, Hepsa, don't say so; pray don't!" cried Genevieve, shocked at Hepsa's pa.s.sion. "If he is your brother, you ought to love him, you know."

"I don't know any such thing, I tell you! You may love him yourself if you want to; but I guess, when he kicks you, and beats you, and steals your things, and knocks your mud-houses down, you won't love him. I'd like to know why _I've_ got to love him?" Hepsa demanded this of Genevieve in a very fierce manner.

"Because he is your brother I suppose, and because he ought to be good; and perhaps he plagues you because you don't love him," answered Genevieve, somewhat perplexed how she should answer the question, thinking in her own heart Hepsa had a very wicked brother. "At any rate," she continued, "G.o.d gave him to you; and I have read how he tells us all to love each other."

"I never did," replied Hepsa; "and if G.o.d gave Tom to me, I wish he'd take him back, for I don't want him."

"Why, Hepsa; how wicked you are! You shall not talk so!" almost shrieked Genevieve. The tears came fast into her eyes, she was so grieved to hear Hepsa talk in that way.

"But I'm not wicked!" retorted Hepsa indignantly. "I don't know who G.o.d is. Why should I? He never comes to see me. I suppose he comes to see you, and is some great person; while I am poor and live in a mean house, and n.o.body comes to see me, of course." Hepsa looked away from Genevieve's blue frock, and seemed to be searching for something away down the street.

Genevieve could not sit still any longer, but, rising, she remonstrated with Hepsa in this manner:

"G.o.d is not a man, Hepsa; and he goes into poor houses as often as into rich ones."

Hepsa looked very sharply upon little Genevieve as she replied,

"Ha! Don't you be telling me stories; why don't I see him ever, I'd like to know? Haven't I got eyes?"

"I don't know," said Genevieve, doubtfully. "Father was reading this morning about people who had eyes, but could not see."

Hepsa looked at her a moment, and then nodded her head towards her, and said, speaking low as to a third person, "She's cracked a little, I think;" then, as she looked towards the fence, she remembered the garden which was behind it, and asked Genevieve for some flowers. But Genevieve only said "O, yes," and went on to say, "Of course you can't see G.o.d, Hepsa! He lives in the skies."

"I shouldn't think he would come down here, then. I wouldn't!"

"But, Hepsa, G.o.d loves us; then, too, he is everywhere at once."

"Mercy!" said Hepsa to herself, in a low tone. "Worse and worse!"

"And he made everything you see, Hepsa, and a great deal more beside,"

continued Genevieve.

"There, there!" said Hepsa, impatiently; "don't talk any more; it sounds odd." Genevieve looked at Hepsa, and the wild, petulant look of her face grieved and shocked her so much, that she burst into tears.

"What is the matter?" said Hepsa. "I thought you were going to get me the flowers."

"And so I will," said Genevieve, wiping up her tears as well as she could; and she ran into the garden, and picked a large bunch of flowers.

There were the sweet mignonette and heliotrope, the pink verbena, and the beautiful white scented verbena, the gay phlox, the pure candytuft, bits of lemon blossoms, and the faithful pansies. It was such a beautiful bunch as to melt poor Hepsa's heart to grat.i.tude.

"I do think I should love to kiss you," she said to Genevieve, "if my face were not so dirty, and you look _so_ clean."

"I don't care!" said Genevieve, and so she kissed Hepsa and said, "Hepsa, I wish you would never again talk so about G.o.d, for I love him very dearly, and so do my father and mother."

Hepsa began to think Genevieve was not crazy, and so she became more serious.

"But did you never read about Him, Hepsa?" asked Genevieve.

"No, indeed; I can't read at all!" exclaimed Hepsa, astonished at Genevieve's questions.

"Not read! Why, Hepsa, why don't you go to school?"

"I can't; mother keeps me at home to tend the baby while she goes to washing."

A bright thought came into Genevieve's little head.

"Where do you live?" she asked.

"O, away down that lane, the other side of the village! I work nearly all the time, some way or other."

"Have you any father?"