What’s your name, dear?” asks the kind lady of the shy little girl with her kitten on her lap.
“Lotty,” is the answer, as the finger goes in the mouth, and the other hand draws pussy closer to her.
“Lotty what? What is your other name, dear?”
“Smif.”
“And where is your home?”
“Up dere,” says the child, pointing tards a cottage two fields beyond.
“We had better take her home, my dear, as her mother will be in a sad way.”
The kind-hearted gentleman takes the little wanderer by the hand. As pussy is Lotty’s personal property and “darling pet,” she cannot give up the charge of it, although the lady offers to carry it.
The fields were not very big ones, and the three were soon in sight of the cottage, and a little turn in the lane brought them right close to the door; and Mrs. Smith set up such a cry as she saw her little runaway coming in between the lady and gentleman, and Miss Pussy hugged up close to her side.
The gentleman explained where they found the little girl, and Mrs. Smith was glad to get her little girl back again.
The little one had been lost while mother went upstairs to “tidy up the room.” They had searched round the house, but she had not been gone long when the lady and gentleman found her.
Well, Lotty and Kitty sat at the door having a little game. But presently Miss Pussy thought, I suppose, she should like a run, and so she frisked off, stopping and looking round at her little playmate, and wagging her tiny tail, as much as to say,
“Come along, Lotty, into the fields.”
Then off again. Poor Lotty, afraid to lose her kitten, followed, and a little hole in the hedge which puss had found out, was big enough for Lotty, and so they ran over the meadow. Sometimes Lotty would stoop to pick up a bluebell, and Kitty would hide herself in a little tuft of grass, till her companion cried out, “Tits, Tits, where are oo?” They came to a nice quiet corner, when both being tired, they agreed to have a rest.
Pussy seems happy enough. Lotty was tired, and one little shoe lay on the grass, as she sat among the flowers under the trees.
Pussy, Pussy! you were at the bottom of the mischief, leading the little girl away from home; but the punishment was not a heavy one—not quite so much milk as usual. But I don’t think there was above a spoonful difference, as Kitty was a general favorite, and Bobbie thought,
“She did not do it on purpose, only for a game.”
The lady and gentleman did not want thanks even, for they were more than paid as they saw Lotty’s mother and brother so happy when the little wanderer was brought back.
But they could not help thinking of that dear father who was so happy when he got his poor wandering boy back safe and sound that he did not know how to do enough to show his joy, and ordered his servants to fetch the best robe in the house for his son, some new shoes, and all that he wanted, and then put a sparkling ring on his finger. The fatted calf was killed (they must have kept it on purpose, I should think, for the occasion), and it was a merry-making time; and as the father looked round on the company who were at the table, he said,
“For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost and is found” Luke 15.
And when Lotty was old enough to go to the Sunday school with Bobbie, she perhaps remembered how she was lost and found, as she heard the teacher read that most beautiful of all stories. She is sure to hear about it. It is such a favorite at school—and I don’t wonder at it. Do you ask why? Because that was about the first Bible story I learned, and it brought me to Jesus, and I have been happy ever since.
ML 11/20/1938