'Yes,' I murmured, 'I'm sure you do, Ross!'
'Look at the stuff they preach, too. Always harping on the mild and simple tack! Who wants to be mild or simple? How can they think that will attract men?'
'Or women,' I said as he paused for breath.
'No, or women,' agreed my brother.
'But, Ross, it does say He was meek and gentle.'
'But not mild, that's the hymn, and they only put it in to rhyme with "child." I hate hymns, except "Onward Christian Soldiers," and "Fight the Good Fight," and decent ones like that. Why do parsons nearly always leave out the other side of Him? Think how strong He was, and strong people are always gentle. Look at daddy. Could you have a stronger man, mentally, morally, or physically, and yet he is most extraordinarily gentle sometimes; meek, too, about some things. I wish I was!'
'I were, Ross.'
'Oh, no! you weren't, never Meg. I will not be reproved for grammar by a twin. Oh, yes, you were meek once, about some bluebells. You're rather a sweet kid sometimes; I mean you used to be,' my brother corrected hastily, lest I should be puffed up with pride.
'Now, if I went into a Monkery,' he continued, being thoroughly wound up, 'it might be a good thing. It would be discipline for me. I should never be able to say prayers all day. I'd always be falling foul over the law of obedience, and if there were a dog fight outside I'd have to go and separate them. It would take me years to get to what Eustace is now and—oh these nuts have got bugs in them, pass me an apple.'
When I went to bed and thought over what Ross had said I remembered that once when we were children, he and I and Eustace were taken round the National Gallery by Aunt Constance, and Ross came up to me privately and said 'Meg, I can't stand all these saints and Madonnas, and the paintings of Him are beastly, why, they're only women with beards. They're not a bit like the picture of Him that's in my head,' said the little chap with a proud tilt to his chin.