“So Clary puzzled over the lines and could make nothing of them. The word _treasure_ she did indeed understand; but where it was to be laid up, and how, were as far from her as ever. And constantly her mind went back to that second line—‘_Who the Saviour obey_.’
“‘I wonder if I couldn’t do that?’ she thought to herself,—‘if I only knew how. Mother always said I was good about minding. It must be so pleasant to be happy.—It doesn’t say that nobody can do it but rich people, either,’—and again she read the words. They were at the bottom of the sheet, and the next might not come to her press at all, or not for some days. She looked over the rest of the sheet. A great many of the hymns she could make nothing of at all,—the very words—‘missionary,’ and ‘convert,’ and ‘ransom,’ were strange to her. Then this hymn caught her eye, and she read,—
“Come to the mercy-seat,— “Come to the place of prayer; “Come, little children, to his feet, “In whom ye live and are.
“Come to your God in prayer— “Come to your Saviour now— “While youthful skies are bright and fair, “And health is on your brow.”
“Clary read no further. That did not suit her, she thought—there was nothing bright about her way of life or herself. It seemed the old thing again—the happy rich people. She went back and read the first one over,—that did not seem so, and she sought further; wearily glancing from hymn to hymn, but with a longing that not even the hard words could check. At last she saw one verse, the first word of which she knew well enough,—
“Poor, weak, and worthless, though I am, “I have a rich almighty Friend,— “Jesus the Saviour is his name,— “He freely loves, and without end.”
“The words went right to the sore spot in Clary’s heart—the spot which had ached for many a long day. Somebody to love her,—a rich friend;—if she had written down her own wishes, they could hardly have been more perfectly expressed; and the tears came so fast, that she had to move away lest they should blot the paper. Bitter tears they were, yet not such as she had often shed; for, she knew not how, those words seemed to carry a possible hope of fulfilment—a half-promise—which her own imaginations had never done. And the first line suited her so exactly,—