“Have you ever seen such courage?” she went on. “The wonderful babies! Fancy fifteen days, fifteen days and nights, alone, unprotected, on the highway, those poor little atoms! Down in their hearts they are really filled with terror. Who would n't be, with such a journey before him? But how finely they concealed it, mastered it! Oh, I hope they won't be robbed. God help them—God help them!”
“God help them, indeed,” said Peter.
“And the little girl, with her medal of the Immaculate Conception. The father, after all, can hardly be the brute one might suspect, since he has given them a religious education. Oh, I am sure, I am sure, it was the Blessed Virgin herself who sent us across their path, in answer to that poor little creature's prayers.”
“Yes,” said Peter, ambiguously perhaps. But he liked the way in which she united him to herself in the pronoun.
“Which, of course,” she added, smiling gravely into his eyes, “seems the height of absurdity to you?”
“Why should it seem the height of absurdity to me?” he asked.
“You are a Protestant, I suppose?”
“I suppose so. But what of that? At all events, I believe there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in the usual philosophies. And I see no reason why it should not have been the Blessed Virgin who sent us across their path.”
“What would your Protestant pastors and masters do, if they heard you? Isn't that what they call Popish superstition?”
“I daresay. But I'm not sure that there's any such thing as superstition. Superstition, in its essence, is merely a recognition of the truth that in a universe of mysteries and contradictions, like ours, nothing conceivable or inconceivable is impossible.”