“Heaven!” He was struck with a strange mental helplessness. “Heaven!” he repeated.
“Don’t anybody know for true?” A despair quenched the sunshine in the brown eyes and made outer darkness.
“An’ how they get there?” continued Bess breathlessly. “That’s what we wanter know, ’cause Dil wants to go an’ take me. Is it very, very far?”
Travis glanced at Dil. Never in his life had he been more at loss. There was a line between her brows, and the wrinkled nose added to the weight of thoughtfulness. Never had he seen a few wrinkles express so much.
She felt as if he was questioning her.
“I went to the Mission School, you see,” she began to explain. “The teacher read about a woman who took her children an’ a girl who lived with her, an’ started for heaven. Then Owny took my shoes, ’cause ’twas wet an’ slushy ’n’ I couldn’t go, an’ so I didn’t hear if they got there. ’N’ when I went again, that teacher had gone away. I didn’t like the new wan. When I ast her she said it was a gory somethin’, an’ you didn’t go that way to heaven now.”
“An allegory, yes.”
“Then, what’s that?”
“A story of something that may happen, like every-day events.” Ah, how could he meet the comprehension of these innocent children?
“Well, did she get there?” with eager haste.