"There she kneels and pours forth her praise or plaint, meekly and duly. Perhaps it's for me she's praying!
"'Leave thou thy sister when she prays.'
"She believes her poor little prayer will be heard and answered somewhere up aloft. The impossible will be done. She wants what she wants so badly, and prays for it so hard.
"She believes—she believes—what doesn't she believe, Tray?
"The world was made in six days. It is just six thousand years old. Once it all lay smothered under rain-water for many weeks, miles deep, because there were so many wicked people about somewhere down in Judee, where they didn't know everything! A costly kind of clearance! And then there was Noah, who wasn't wicked, and his most respectable family, and his ark—and Jonah and his whale—and Joshua and the sun, and what not. I remember it all, you see, and, oh! such wonderful things that have happened since! And there's everlasting agony for those who don't believe as she does; and yet she is happy, and good, and very kind; for the mere thought of any live creature in pain makes her wretched!
"After all, if she believes in me, she'll believe in anything; let her!
"Indeed, I'm not sure that it's not rather ungainly for a pretty woman not to believe in all these good old cosmic taradiddles, as it is for a pretty child not to believe in Little Red Riding-hood, and Jack and the Beanstalk, and Morgiana and the Forty Thieves; we learn them at our mother's knee, and how nice they are! Let us go on believing them as long as we can, till the child grows up and the woman dies and it's all found out.
"Yes, Tray, I will be dishonest for her dear sake. I will kneel by her side, if ever I have the happy chance, and ever after, night and morning, and all day long on Sundays if she wants me to! What will I not do for that one pretty woman who believes in me? I will respect even that belief, and do my little best to keep it alive forever. It is much too precious an earthly boon for me to play ducks and drakes with....
"So much for Alice, Tray—your sweet mistress and mine.
"But, then, there's Alice's papa—and that's another pair of sleeves, as we say in France.