“Then why doesn’t He kill the Devil?”
“And scalp him?” added Dimples.
“That would stop all trouble, wouldn’t it, Daddy?”
Poor Daddy was rather floored. The Lady came to his help.
“If everything was good and easy in this world, then there would be nothing to fight against, and so, Laddie, our characters would never improve.”
“It would be like a football match with all the players on one side,” said Daddy.
“If there was nothing bad, then, nothing would be good, for you would have nothing to compare by,” added the Lady.
“Well, then,” said Laddie, with the remorseless logic of childhood, “if that is so, then the Devil is very useful; so he can’t be so very bad, after all.”
“Well, I don’t see that,” Daddy answered. “Our Army can only show how brave it is by fighting the German Emperor, but that does not prove that the German Emperor is a very nice person, does it now?
“Besides,” Daddy continued, improving the occasion, “you must not think of the Devil as a person. You must think of all the mean things one could do, and all the dirty things, and all the cruel things, and that is really the