Part 26 (1/2)

”And p'r'aps dear little Freddie will begin, too, when he gets old enough. You know there are boy bands. But where is Freddie? He was here when I came in.”

Just then a high-pitched little voice from the next room called, ”Whoop!

Marty!”

”There he is. I wonder what sort of a funny place he's hiding in this time,” said Marty, laughing and running to see.

Freddie had taken one of his papa's large handkerchiefs out of the lower drawer of the bureau, and spreading it out over his head was standing in the middle of the room, hiding. How he laughed when Marty found him!

Soon after Mrs. Ashford and Marty began studying the Bible with the help of the concordance, they agreed that it would be pleasant to read a chapter together every night before Marty went to bed. Sometimes she was too sleepy to read more than a few verses, but generally she tried to get ready in good time so that she would be wide enough awake to read a whole chapter, unless it was a very long one.

They were reading in Luke's Gospel now, but the evening of this day Marty said,

”Mamma, mayn't we read that chapter that has in it, 'Here am I; send me'? Miss Stevenson read that verse to us to-day when she was talking about us going, any of us. Do you know where it is?”

”I think I can find it pretty easily,” Mrs. Ashford replied. ”I know it is in Isaiah. Here it is--the sixth chapter.”

They read it, and the eighth verse coming to Marty, she read slowly and reverently,

”Also I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.”