Miss Smiley straightened up and looked at her sternly.
“I was only asking a question,” explained Mermaid. “I wouldn’t think of saying ‘hell’ except to ask a question. But any one who says ‘hell’ is asking a big question, isn’t he, Miss Smiley?”
The funny child, as some folks in Blue Port called her, was not expressing her doubt for the first time. She had first shocked a Sunday School teacher with it. The Sunday School teacher had spoken to Keturah Smiley but had regretted it immediately, for Keturah had said:
“Well, what’s the matter? Can’t you convince her there’s a hell? That’s your job! Why put it on me?”
So now when Mermaid put the general inquiry as to whether any one saying “hell” were not asking a big question, Keturah merely gazed at her darkly and replied:
“Most likely he’s answering one about himself.”
This tickled Mermaid. She renewed an old controversy concerning the front parlour.
“What’s the use of singing, as we do at Sunday School, ‘Let a Little Sunshine In,’ if the shutters are always fastened?” she demanded. “How can you expect me to stand up and sing, ‘There’s Sunshine in My Heart To-day,’ Miss Smiley, when there’s not even sunshine in the house?”
Keturah snorted. “My heart is not as big as my house,” she answered. “Sunshine in some people’s hearts, like sunshine in some people’s houses, would show up a good deal that would better be hidden.”
Mermaid’s blue eyes shone, even in the semi-darkness. From the very first she had liked living with her Dad’s sister, despite that sister’s dark moods and bleak rages, because Keturah Smiley had a gift for saying sharp, true things, and saying them so you remembered them. She had not been unkind to the girl and had even shown a certain grudging liking for her as Mermaid, whether from some natural gift or from crossing blades in conversational fencing, developed a faculty for thinking her own thoughts and putting them in her own words—and more and more the right words.