The late Bishop Crotty told [this] true story. A girl of sixteen lay in hospital. She was the eldest child in a large, poor family. Her mother had died when the youngest child was born, and for years the girl had spent herself looking after the home and mothering the younger children. She had almost literally worked herself to death and now lay dyinbg of tuberculosis, her face drawn and her hands rough with the hard work of the years.

A Church worker, narrow-minded and conventional, came and questioned her about her religion. Had she been confirmed? Had she been baptized? Had she gone to Sunday School or church? To all these questions the girl gave a weary ‘No’.

The lady visitor took a very serious view of this and asked, ‘What will you do then when you die and have to tell God all that?

The girl, who had been too busy caring for others to do any of the things her visitor felt were so important, simply laid her thin, work-stained hands on he coverlet.

Very quietly she replied, ‘I shall show him my hands’.

Expository Times, April 1969, p. 219