re finished they
were a good deal soiled by having been on the way so long, and perhaps
partly by the little hands not always being so clean as they might
have been when he turned from play to work; but Mrs Wilson washed them
herself, and they looked, if not as white as snow, at least as white
as the whitest lamb you ever saw. I will not attempt to describe the
delight of his mother, the triumph of Willie, or the gratification of
his father, who saw in this good promise of his boy's capacity; for all
that I have written hitherto is only introductory to my story, and I
long to begin and tell it you in a regular straightforward fashion.

Before I begin, however, I must not forget to tell you that Willie did
ask his father the question with Mrs Wilson's answer to which he had not
been satisfied--I mean the question whether God worked; and his father's
answer, after he had sat pondering for a while in his chair, was
something to this effect:--

"Yes, Willie; it seems to me that God works more than anybody--for He
works all night and all day, and, if I remember rightly, Jesus tells
us somewhere that He works all Sunday too. If He were to stop working,
everything would stop being. The sun would stop shining, and the moon
and the stars; the corn would stop growing; there would be no more
apples or gooseberries; your eyes would stop seeing; your ears would
stop hearing; your fingers couldn't move an inch; and, worst of all,
your little heart would stop loving."

"No, papa," cried Willie; "I shouldn't stop loving, I'm sure."

"Indeed you would, Willie."

"Not you and mamma."

"Yes; you wouldn't love us any more than if you were dead asleep without
dreaming."

"That would be dreadful."

"Yes it would. So you see how good God is to us--to go on working, that
we may be able to love each other."

"Then if God works like that all day long, it must be a fine thing to
work," said Willie.

"You are right. It is a fine thing to work--the finest thing in the
world, if it comes of love, as God's work does."

This conversation made Willie quite determined to learn to knit; for if
God worked, he would work too. And although the work he undertook was a
very small work, it was like all God's great works, for every loop he
made had a little love looped up in it, like an invisible, softest,
downiest lining to the stockings. And after those, he went on knitting
a pair for his father; and indeed, although he learned to work with a
n