“Oh, Eppie,” he gasped, “we will never see him again.”
She had drawn him down to the window-seat, where they leaned together, and she was silent for a moment at his last words. But suddenly her arms tightened around him with an almost vindictive tenderness. “We will,” she said.
“Never! Never!” Gavan gasped. “His eyes, Eppie,—his eyes seemed to know it; they were saying good-by forever. And, oh, Eppie, they were so astonished—so astonished,” he repeated, while the sobs shook him.
“We will,” Eppie said again, pressing the boy’s head to hers, while she shut her eyes over the poignant memory. “Why, Gavan, I don’t know much about God, but I do know about heaven. Animals will go to heaven; it wouldn’t be heaven unless they were there.”
That memory of the astonishment in Robbie’s eyes seemed to put knives in her heart, but over the sharpness she grasped her conviction.
In all the despair of his grief, the boy had, in answering her, the disciplined logic of his more formal faith, more clearly seen fact.
“Dear Eppie, animals have no souls.”
“How do you know?” she retorted, almost with anger.
“One only has to think. They stop, as Robbie has.”
“How do you know he has stopped? It’s only,” said Eppie, groping, “that he doesn’t want his body any longer.”