Paula the Waldensian - Eva Lecomte

sternness in his look either.
Catalina pointed furtively at Paula.
"And how hast thou answered Him?"
"I've asked Him that He might save me and that He might make me a
real Christian."
There was a strange look in my poor father's face as he answered
quietly, "If I could believe that there was a God, I would say that He had
heard thee."
Catalina wrote a long letter to grandmother, the contents of which she
did not care to show us. So it was as Catalina wished, and Maria promised to
take good care of the invalid.
At last the great day arrived. Paula and I, up at sunrise, scurried to the
window to look at the weather, and oh joy! It was a magnificent day without
a cloud in the sky! A little later when Teresa arrived to call us, great was her
surprise to find us all ready to start.
"What a wonderful thing," she remarked dryly, "you'd never be late to
school if you did this every morning."
After the first moment of enthusiasm, Paula strangely enough began to
lose little by little the happy atmosphere which usually surrounded her. I
discovered soon the cause. She was thinking of Catalina.
"It's going to be terribly lonely for her," she said.
"Never fear," I said, "she can go another time."
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