"Good day, missy."
He opened the door for her, and she passed out, shaking back her sunny curls. But when she was half-way up the steps she suddenly stopped, stood in thought for a moment, and then turned back.
"Mr. Betts," she said, thrusting her pretty head inside the door again.
"Well, missy?"
"I can't understand about your never doing wrong. Mother says Jesus died for sinful people, and I thought that every one had sinned. But if you've never done wrong, then Jesus can't have died for you. It's very strange."
"Is it, miss?" said Michael, with a grim smile. "Well, don't you trouble your pretty self about me. It's all right. There's some things, you know, that little folks can't understand."
"Oh, there are, I know, lots. I'm always finding that out. But it's horrid not to be able to understand. Well, good-bye."
She ran off again, and was quickly out of sight.
"What a little chatterbox!" said Michael to himself; "what an extraordinary child! But why should they stuff her head with those old-fashioned theological ideas? I suppose she was right in a sense about my being a sinner. These old theologians would say so, at any rate. And in church, people confess themselves miserable sinners, but not one in a hundred means it. Anyhow, I'm sure of this, that if there was no one worse than me in the world to-day, it would be a very different world from what it is. So that is Professor Lavers' little girl. I wonder if she'll remember the fourpence."