MILLIE SAT by the fireside alone. Her father and mother were upstairs getting ready to go out for an evening’s entertainment. Millie had wanted to go with her friend, Joyce, to a children’s meeting to be held in the schoolhouse nearby. Millie had pleaded to go that night, especially as there was to be a missionary there and with him several girls from a foreign land who once had been heathen but who now knew and loved the Lord Jesus. They were not ashamed to confess Him as their Saviour and Lord.
Millie’s parents, on the other hand, loved the world, and I suppose they wanted their only child to grow up as they were. They did not want her to be brought in contact with the gospel of Christ, and with those who love His name. So Millie sat by the fire, her kitten Tabby stretched out on the rug bide her, looking now and again at her as if she wanted to share her mistress’s sorrow.
All at once a happy thought struck Millie. She jumped up and got a pencil and a piece of paper. Hastily she wrote a very earnest request that she be allowed to go with Joyce to the children’s meeting, addressing it to her father in most affectionate terms. Then putting it in an envelope, she tied it around Tabby’s neck with a piece of ribbon. Off ran Tabby upstairs as if she knew the whole matter. When Mr. Gray saw her, he laughed as he untied the envelope from Tabby’s neck, and more still when he saw that she stood as if waiting for an answer. Tabby’s letter had the desired effect, for Millie’s father said to his wife, “Let her go. It will help her to while away the evening and it won’t do her much harm for once.”
Mr. Gray took his pencil and wrote his consent on the back of Millie’s letter, tied it carefully around Tay’s neck and sent her off downstairs to Millie.
Millie put on her hat and coat and in a few minutes was walking arm in arm in the moonlight with Joyce on the way to the school. I cannot tell you all that she saw and heard there, but that night Millie’s heart was won by the love of Jesus. She trusted Him as her Saviour, and was joyfully saved.
A short time later, Millie’s father died suddenly, and she was left to be the comforter of her brokenhearted mother. The Lord used Millie’s sweet voice, singing many of her favorite hymns, to unlock her mother’s heart. One of her first walks was to the meeting in the little schoolhouse where Millie had first heard of the Saviour’s love. Not long after her mother opened her heart to Jesus and confessed Him as her Saviour and Lord.
ML-12/11/1966