"Much good marble is wasted on graves," he declared. "But it doesn't bring the dead to life. Do you believe in the resurrection of the body, Estelle? I hope you find it easy. That is one of the things I never was honestly able to say I had grasped. Reason will fight against the nobler tyranny of faith. The old soul in a glorified body—yet the same body, you understand. We shan't all be in one pattern in heaven. We shall preserve our individuality; and yet I deprecate passing eternity in this tabernacle. Improvements may be counted upon, I think. The art of the Divine Potter can doubtless make beautiful the humblest and the most homely vessel."
"Nobody who loves you would have you changed," she assured him.
Then his mind wandered away and he smiled.
"I listened to a street preacher once—long, long ago when I was young—and he said that the road to everlasting destruction was lined with women and gin shops. Upon which a sailor-man, who listened to him, shouted out, 'Oh death, where is thy sting?' The meeting dissolved in a very tornado of laughter. Sailors have a great sense of humour. It can take the place of a fire on a cold day. One touch of humour makes the whole world kin. If you have a baby, teach it to laugh as well as to walk. But I think your baby will do that readily enough."
On another occasion he laughed suddenly to himself and explained his amusement to Sabina, who sat by him.
"Eunominus, the heretic, boasted that he knew the nature of God; whereupon St. Basil instantly puzzled him with twenty-one questions about the body of the ant!"
Estelle also tried to make Mr. Churchouse discuss Abel Dinnett. She told him of an interesting fact.
"I have got Ray to promise a big thing," she said. "He hesitated, but he loved me too well to deny me. Besides, feeling as I do, I couldn't take any denial. You see Nature is so much greater than all else to me, and contrasted with her, our little man-made laws, often so mean and hateful in their cowardly caution and cruel injustice, look pitiful and beneath contempt. And I don't want to come between Raymond and his eldest son. I won't—I won't do it. Abel is his first-born, and it may be cold-blooded of me—Ray said it was at first—but I insist on that. I've made him see, and I've made father see. I feel so much about it, that I wouldn't marry him if he didn't recognize Abel first and treat him as the first-born ought to be treated."
"Abel—Abel Dinnett," said the other, who had not followed her speech. "A good-looking boy, but lawless. He wants the world to bend to him; and yet, if you'll believe me, there is a vein of fine sentiment in his nature. With tears in his eyes he once told me that he had seen a fellow pupil at school cruelly killing insects with a burning glass; and he had beaten the cruel lad and broken his glass. That is all to the good. The difficulty for him is that he was born out of wedlock. This great disability could have been surmounted in America, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, or, in fact, anywhere but in England. The law of the natural child in this country would bring a blush to the cheek of a gorilla. But neither Church nor State will lift a finger to right the infamy."
"We are always wanting to pluck the mote out of our neighbour's eyes, and never see the beam in our own," she answered. "Women will alter that some day—and the disgusting divorce laws, too. Perhaps these are the first things they will alter, when they have the power."