So said the mother, and she felt his plump little arms round her neck, and his warm little body nestling against hers.

“How good that it did not really happen!⁠ ⁠…” thought she.

“But that is not all, ma’am⁠ ⁠…” Molly insisted, in her usual blundering way. “That is not all. Sometimes only one person asks, and yet He can’t possibly do it.⁠ ⁠… We know that, quite well!⁠ ⁠… I know it, you see, because I take His messages,” said Molly, the angel, in just the same voice in which yesterday, after taking a message from her mistress to her master, she told the nurse: “I know master is at home, for I have taken him a message.”

“How often have I had to report to Him,” said Molly, “that someone⁠—a young one generally⁠—asks to be helped not to do bad deeds, not get drunk or live loosely⁠—asks, in fact, that vice should be extracted from him as if it were a splinter!”

“How well Molly speaks!” thought her mistress.

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