"You did."
"I didn't. I'd sooner die than be an atheist. One came here to dinner once; he had a red beard, and smoked shag in the drawing-room. Ugh! such a man!"
"Do you believe in God?"
"I used to, when I was a child. I was always told He would strike me dead if I told a lie, and then I found that He didn't. It was like the man who lived in the oven. I was always told that the Black Man who lived in the oven would run away with me if I stole the jam; and one day I stole the jam, and opened the oven door and looked in. I was in a terrible fright, but there wasn't any man there."
"It's very strange," said Charles.
"That there wasn't a man there?"
"I was referring," said Charles stiffly, "to such thoughts in the mind of one so young as you are."
"Oh, I'm as old as the hills," cried Fanny in the voice of a blasé woman of the world, making a grab at a passing moth and then flinging her hat after it, "as old as the—mercy! what's that?"
"Miss Fanny!" cried the voice of Susannah, who was lowing like a cow through garden and shrubbery in search of her missing mistress, "Miss Fah-ny, Miss——"
"That's tea," said Fanny, rising, and leading the way to the house.