"I wish I were your mother," said Miss Trent, looking at him with a sparkle in her eyes. "Can't you imagine I am?"
"Couldn't!" said Noel briefly.
Then after a moment's pause he said:
"Do you ever have the Devil in your house?"
Miss Trent checked her inclination to laugh. The small boy she saw was in dead earnest and could not stand ridicule.
"I hope I don't," she said gravely, "but I'm not sure. What does he come into houses for?"
"To get into your heart," Noel responded in a most cheerful tone. "He comes into mine ever so many times a day. Mums says if you're a good soldier you can keep him out, but he's too strong for me, unless I get behind Jesus Christ and fight him like that. We know a girl who doesn't know about fighting him. She lets him do what he likes with her."
"A great many people do that," said Miss Trent. "Go on, Cherub, tell me more."
"I don't make fren's with the Devil often," Noel went on gravely, "but when Chris gets me down on the ground and sits on me, I don't care nuffin about being good and pleasing God; I only wiss I could kill him, and of course Satan likes me to wiss that, for you know what I am then?"
"What?" asked Miss Trent, looking as if she were enjoying herself.