"Do, you should say, dear."
"'Do,' then," corrected Mimmo, "they do. Babbo says 'accidenti' and bangs the door, but you punish us if we do,—why does no one punish him?"
"Punish Babbo!" exclaimed Beppino agape.
"Grown up people do many things that children aren't allowed to do,—but they don't always do what is right, and God punishes them," said Ragna.
"Who ith God," asked Beppino.
"I know," Mimmo hastened to show his superior knowledge,—"He is a big person sitting on a cloud in the sky, with a beard and a dove with shiny lines out of it,—I have never seen him really truly, but Babbo has a picture of him."
"Yeth," assented Beppino without interest.
But Mimmo was not so assured as he wished to appear.
"Mammina," he said, "does God come off his cloud to punish people?"
"God is everywhere," said his mother.