It was absurd to pile up any more.
"You see," said the child, "no one needed them over there;" inclining her head to the East. "You have a little bed and a pallet, and it is warm, so you do not need quilts. And the poor people and the servants have a mat they spread down anywhere and a blanket, but you see, they sleep with their clothes on."
Eunice looked rather horrified.
"But they change them! They would—why, there would be soil and vermin."
"They go to the river and bathe and wash them out. They sling them on the stones in a queer way. But some of them are very dirty and ragged. They are not like the English and us, and don't wear many clothes. Sometimes they are wrapped up in a white sheet."
"It is a very queer country. They are not civilized, or Christianized. I don't know what will become of them in the end."
"It's their country and no one knows how old it is. China is the oldest country in the world."
"But, my dear, there was the garden of Eden when God first created the world. Nothing could be older than that, you know. Two thousand years to the flood, and two thousand years to the coming of Christ, and some people think the world will end in another two thousand years."
"I don't see any sense in burning it up, when there are so many lovely things in it;" and Cynthia's eyes took on a deep, inquiring expression. "That was what the chaplain used to say. Father thought it would go on and on, getting wiser and greater, and the people learning to be better and making wonderful things."
"My dear, what the Bible says must be true. And it will be burned up. You have a Bible?"