‘Would you like me to read to you, then?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I should; for, do you know, after all, I don’t think there’s anything like the New Testament.’
‘Anything like it!’ he repeated. ‘I should think not! Only I wish I did know what it all meant. I wish I could talk to my father as I would to Jesus Christ if I saw him. But if I could talk to my father, he wouldn’t understand me. He would speak to me as if I were the very scum of the universe for daring to have a doubt of what he told me.’
‘But he doesn’t mean himself,’ I said.
‘Well, who told him?’
‘The Bible.’
‘And who told the Bible?’
‘God, of course.’
‘But how am I to know that? I only know that they say so. Do you know, Wilfrid—I don’t believe my father is quite sure himself, and that is what makes him in such a rage with anybody who doesn’t think as he does. He’s afraid it mayn’t be true after all.’
I had never had a father to talk to, but I thought something must be wrong when a boy couldn’t talk to his father. My uncle was a better father than that came to.