ng him.

Hepsa's father was not a good man; he was unkind to his poor wife and
children; so it was no wonder Tom had gone on, following the example
constantly placed before him; but he was a child yet, and when he saw
how Hepsa began to love him, that she grieved without being angry when
he was unkind to her, it could not but touch his heart. He was half
ashamed, too, when she saved for him some of the good things Genevieve
had brought her. At first, 't is true, he thought little about it, but
when often, after he had been so ugly to her, she came just the same,
and offered him half of her orange, or a part of her nuts, he began to
feel that he was a naughty boy, and that Hepsa was better than she used
to be.

It was very natural he should ask her the reason of this, and very
natural, too, that she should answer in this way:

"Why, Tom, I have learned a great deal about God from Genevieve, and
then she has taught me to read, and I have learned a great deal that
way. Tom, where do you think Susan went when she died?"

Tom couldn't tell. Susan was an elder sister of theirs, whom they had
loved very dearly, and who had died some two years before.

"Well, Tom; there are angels who take all the children, as soon as they
die, and show them wonderful things, and teach them, so they can go into
a beautiful place called heaven, and live with God. Well, if you begin
to be good here, and love people, you will go into that heaven sooner,
when you die, than if you are naughty, and don't think about these
things while you are here. I want to go there very much, and so I try to
be good, though I don't always make out well." Tom looked thoughtful at
his sister's words, and then said:

"I think that little Genevieve will go very fast, when she dies. But I
don't think father will get there very soon, now I tell you!"

"O, but Tom," said Hepsa sadly, "we must not think who will not go, but
how _we_ may go."

"I wish I knew how to read," said Tom; "but I never can go to school,
father makes me saw so much wood."

Then Hepsa asked him to let her teach him; and, after a good deal of
hesitation, he told her he didn't care if she did.

Some time after this, Genevieve's father and mother went away from that
place, and she parted from Hepsa with many tears in her eyes, and much
grief in her heart. "If I never see you again," she said, "don't forget
we are both going into the gardens up there," and Hepsa always
remembered.

Geneviev