"It means that a good deal more than people think. Did not our Lord say that many that are first shall be last, and the last first?"
"What has that to do with this nineteenth century?"
"Perhaps that the honorable shopkeeper and the mean nobleman will one day change places."
"Oh," thought Hesper, "that is why the lower classes take so to religion!" But what she said was: "Oh, yes, I dare say! But everything then will be so different that it won't signify. When we are all angels, nobody will care who is first, and who is last. I'm sure, for one, it won't be anything to me."
Hesper was a tolerable attendant at church—I will not say whether high or low church, because I should be supposed to care.
"In the kingdom of heaven," answered Mary, "things will always look what they are. My father used to say people will grow their own dresses there, as surely as a leopard his spots. He had to do with dresses, you know. There, not only will an honorable man look honorable, but a mean or less honorable man must look what he is."
"There will be nobody mean there."
"Then a good many won't be there who are called honorable here."
"I have no doubt there will be a good deal of allowance made for some people," said Hesper. "Society makes such demands!"