"I know what you wanted to say, dear Jo. That's the reason, too, why I always speak of The Father. I understand that the best; because, you see, I never knew my earthly father, but he must have been much better than other fathers."
"Why?" asked Johannes.
"Because I am much better than all those people round about me, and better than that common, dark woman who had another father."
Marjon said this quite simply, thinking it to be so. She said it in a modest manner, while feeling that it was something which ought to be spoken.
"Not that I have been so very good. Oh, no! But yet I have been better than the others, and that was because of the father; for my mother, too, was only a member of a troupe. And now it is so lovely that I can say 'Father' just as Markus does!"
Johannes looked at her, with the sadness still in his eyes.
"Yes, but all the meanness, the ugliness, and the sorrow that our Father permits! First, He launches us into the world, helpless and ignorant, without telling us anything. And then, when we do wrong because we know no better, we are punished, Is that fatherly?"
But Marjon said:
"Did you fancy it was not? Kees gets punished, too, so he will learn. And now that he is clever and well taught he gets hardly any blows—only tid-bits. Isn't that so, Kees?"
"But, Marjon, did you not tell me how you found Kees—shy, thin, and mangy—his coat all spoiled with hunger and beatings; and how he has remained timid ever since, because a couple of rascally boys had mistreated him?"