“The only thing I really enjoyed,” running on, “was the front seat on the top of an omnibus, with a talkative driver. That was always funny, whether he discoursed on politics, or religion, or the aristocracy; or expressed himself forcibly on motor-cars and the ‘Twopenny Tube.’ Do you use the Tube much?”
“Nearly every day of my life.”
“Goodness!—and you still live! Don’t you think Dante must wish he had thought of a Tube for his Inferno? It must be like Heaven to come here and sniff our lovely mountain air all day long. I wonder you don’t go about with your nose in the air too busy sniffing to speak.”
“It reminds one of what one might imagine Heaven, in various ways,” he said, with smiling innuendo.
“Eileen and mother might stand for the angels,” she ran on, “and Jack for the prodigal son or penitent sinner.”
“And where would you be?”
“Well, I guess I’d be most useful helping Saint Peter keep the door,” looking wicked, “but perhaps I shouldn’t be admitted at all.
“Not but that I’d stand as good a chance as Jack,” she finished with a decisive air.
“Is Jack Mr O’Hara?”
“Yes. He lives at the Parsonage next door to us.”