“More,” said Daddy, stoutly.
“Oo!” from all three.
“Daddy, dear,” said Laddie. “I’ve been wondering about the deluge.”
“Yes, dear. What was it?”
“Well, the story about the Ark. All those animals were in the Ark, just two of each, for forty days. Wasn’t that so?”
“That is the story.”
“Well, then, what did the carnivorous animals eat?”
One should be honest with children and not put them off with ridiculous explanations. Their questions about such matters are generally much more sensible than their parents’ replies.
“Well, dear,” said Daddy, weighing his words, “these stories are very, very old. The Jews put them in the Bible, but they got them from the people in Babylon, and the people in Babylon probably got them from some one else away back in the beginning of things. If a story gets passed down like that, one person adds a little and another adds a little, and so you never get things quite as they happened. The Jews put it in the Bible exactly as they heard it, but it had been going about for thousands of years before then.”
“So it was not true?”