Father seemed to think it was a heaven-sent opportunity to point a practical moral, so remarked that if children really loved God, they ought not to bring a dead mouse in church to frighten the others with, and that if Tommy were sorry he had better put it in the porch. (That's the worst of father, he isn't satisfied with repentance; you have to burn the vanities as well).
'Don't love God,' said Tommy.
Father stared down at the little heathen with a startled look on his face.
'You don't love God, Tommy?'
'No,' said Tommy, who is nothing if not truthful, 'course I don't, only believe in Him.'
I thought it was the most humorous thing I had ever heard, but Aunt Amelia was horrified, and at tea said that the present generation was hopeless and that Tommy's remark was a specimen of the apostasy of the age.
'Well, I belong to the church militant, Amelia, so I'm not willing to leave it at that,' said daddy, rather as if he were trying to keep his temper. So I, by way of pouring oil on the troubled waters, said,—
'But, daddy, don't most people feel like Tommy? They "believe," but I think it's most frightfully difficult to love the Man of Sorrows.'
Father looked at me with much the same expression as he had when he looked at Tommy, but he only said gently,—
'Darling, I don't think you will love the Man of Sorrows until you've become acquainted with grief yourself.'