ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you."
"What next, Uncle Edward?"
"Isn't that promise enough?"
"Yes; but I thought you had more."
"There is a great deal more. Look out Thessalonians v. 23, 24."
Dolly read, slowly, aloud now —
"'And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is He that calleth you, who also will do it.' That is beautiful, Uncle Edward!"
"Do you want another? Find Jude, and read the 24th and 25th verses."
With some trouble Dolly found it.
"'Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.'"
Dolly slipped off Mr. Eberstein's knee and retook her old place by the fire; where she sat turning from one passage to another of those she had been reading. Mr. Eberstein watched her, how the ribbon markers of the Bible were carefully laid in two of the places, and a couple of neat slips of paper prepared for the others.
"What have you been doing to-day, Dolly?" he asked at length.
"We went to see the water works."
"Oh, you did! And what did you think of the water works?"
"We went up to the top and walked about. Do the people in Philadelphia want so much water as all that?"
"They want a great deal more. The Fairmount works give only enough for part of the city."
"That is taking a great deal of trouble to get water."
"It would be worse trouble to do without it."
"But why don't people all live in the country, as we do at home? then they would have water for nothing."
"Humph! That would answer, Dolly, if people were contented with water; they all want wine. I mean, my child, that most people are not satisfied with simple doings; and for anything more they must have money; and they can make money faster in cities. Therefore they build cities."
"Is that what they build cities for?" said Dolly.
"Largely. Not altogether. A great many things can be better done where people are congregated together; it is for the convenience of trade and business, in many kinds and in many ways. What have you been doing since you came home from the water works?"
"O Uncle Edward!" said Dolly, suddenly rising now and coming to him, "Aunt Harry has opened for me her old bookcase!"
"What old bookcase? I didn't know she had an old bookcase."
"Oh yes; the one where she keeps the books she had when she was as old as I am."
"And as young, eh? Well, what is in that bookcase? is it a great find?"
"O Uncle Edward, there is a great deal in it! It is wonderful. Books I never saw, and they look so interesting!"
"What, for instance? Something to rival Plutarch's Lives?"
"I don't know," said Dolly; "you know I have not read them yet. There is 'Sandford and Merton;' I was reading in that, and I like it very much; and the 'Looking Glass' is another; and 'Rosamond' I am sure is interesting. Oh there is a whole load of them."
"Well I am glad of it," said Mr. Eberstein. "That is the right sort of stuff for your busy little brain; will not weigh too heavy. Now I suppose you will be reading all the time you are in the house."
"Aunt Harry has begun to teach me to knit."
"Very good," said Mr. Eberstein. "I believe in knitting too. That's safe."
They went to dinner, and after dinner there was a further knitting lesson, in which Dolly seemed absorbed; nevertheless, before the evening was over she brought up a very different subject again.
"Aunt Harry," she began, in the midst of an arduous effort to get the loops of wool on her needles in the right relative condition, – "does mother know about the Bible?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Eberstein, with a glance at her husband, "she knows about it, something."
"Then why did she never tell me anything about it?"
Mrs. Eberstein hesitated.
"I suppose, Dolly, her thoughts were fuller of other things."
"But how could they be?" said the little one, laying her hands with their knitting work in her lap, and looking up.
Her aunt did not answer.
"How could her thoughts be fuller of other things, if she knows the Bible?" Dolly urged.
"I don't think she really knows much of what is in the Bible," Mrs. Eberstein said. "She has never read it much."
"I don't think she knows about Jesus," Dolly went on gravely; "for she never told me; and she would if she had known, I think. Aunt Harriet, I think I ought to tell her now."
"What would you tell her, my darling?"
"Oh, I will tell her that I know Him and love Him; and I will tell her I have got a Bible, and some of the things I have found in it. I will ask her to get one too, and read it. I don't believe she knows."
"The reason why a great many people do not know, Dolly, is, as your Aunt Harry says, that they are so much taken up with other things."
"Then I think one ought to take care not to be too much taken up with other things," said Dolly very seriously.
"But you have got to be taken up with other things," Mr. Eberstein went on. "Here you are going to school in a few days; then your head will be full of English and French, and your hands full of piano keys and harp strings, from morning till night. How are you going to do?"
Dolly looked at the speaker, came and placed herself on his knee again, and laid a hand on his shoulder; eyeing him steadily.
"Ought I not to go to school?"
"Must! – else you cannot be the right sort of a woman, and do the right sort of work."
"How then, Uncle Edward? what shall I do?"
"I'll tell you one thing, Dolly. Don't study and practise to get ahead of somebody else; but to please the King!"
"The King – that is Jesus?"
"Certainly."
Dolly nodded, in full agreement with the rule of action as thus stated; presently brought forward another idea.
"Will He care? Would it please Him to have me play on the piano, or learn French and arithmetic?"
"Dolly, the more you know, and the better you know it, the better servant you can be; you will have the more to
