SHE COULD 


BE TRUSTED.



"I CAN trust my little daughter; I know she tells me everything," said the mother, holding up the bright, gentle face, and looking down upon it fondly.

"Yes, mamma," was on the little girl's lips, but her eyes dropped suddenly, and her cheeks were crimsoned in a moment. A kiss on the pretty lips, and the mother was turning away.

"Mamma," said the little husky voice, " let me whisper in your ear."

"Mamma, you trust me, I must tell you everything," and her voice was so low that only the mother heard it. As she bent over to catch the hurried words, she felt the little heart fluttering under her fingers, she saw the face flush and pale; she knew, too, by the quiver of the lips the struggle of the moment.

She would have kissed the lips, the face, and hushed the heart; she would have stopped the trying story, but she knew that a fault confessed was a fault half conquered, and so waited to the end.

It was a strange, new thoughtlessness the little girl recounted, of a sad step aside from the narrow path of right. She knew better. She had been more than half unhappy on account of it for several days, especially as she could not gather courage to confess it, and only the words of trust brought about that confession. Could she say, "Yes, mamma," knowing that at that very moment she was covering a little corner of the heart where she had hidden a fault she wished no eyes to see. Could she take praise, which was not hers by right? Kiss the lips that said, "I know she tells me everything"? Could she add deceit to her first fault, and so double it? 

With the quick impulse of right she turned and told the fault, waiting with her bowed head to be forgiven.

The mother, sorry for the child's trial, yet glad of her victory for right, was still sad in thinking of the fault, it was such a new, unexpected fault. 

Other children might have done the same thing-other children might nave done worse but her own fair faced child! She could have wept before her as she stood both in gladness and in sorrow---sorrow for the fault, gladness that she was true; too true to receive praise unworthily, too strong for the right to allow the hardness of the confession to overcome her.

She stooped and folded her in her arms, saying, "Kiss me, Kathrina; your fault would break my heart, but that I believe this hour you have conquered; you have done well now I know, better than I knew before, that I can trust my little daughter." 




Christian Union.




THE hours are viewless angels, 

That still go gliding by,

And bear each minute's record up 

To Him who sits on high.