“Yes; but if he should come to life! He was strong enough for anything.”
“What an idea!” She couldn’t think where the boy got those strange irreligious ideas from—from her brother Samuel, she supposed!
“The dead don’t come back like that, Jeremy dear,” she explained gently. “How do you do, Miss Mackenzie? Oh, much better, thank you. It was only a little foolish toothache. It isn’t right of us to suppose they do. God doesn’t mean us to.”
“I don’t believe God could stop the Black Bishop coming back if he wanted to,” said Jeremy.
Aunt Amy would have been terribly shocked had she not seen a most remarkable hat in Forrest’s window that was only thirteen and eleven.
“What did you say, dear? With a little bit of blue at the side. . . . Oh, but you mustn’t say that, dear. That’s very wicked. God can do everything.”
“Saladin didn’t believe in God,” said Jeremy, winking at Tommy Winchester who was in charge of his mother on the other side of the street. “At least not in your God, or father’s. His God. . . .”
“Oh, there’s Mrs. Winchester! Take off your hat, Jeremy. I’m sure it’s going to snow before I get back. Perhaps Miss Nightingale will be out and I’m sure I shan’t be sorry. You mustn’t say that, Jeremy. There’s only one God.”
“But if there’s only one God——” he began, then broke off at the sight of a dog, strangely like Hamlet. Not so nice though—not nearly so nice.
He was returning to his consideration of the Deity, the Black Bishop and Saladin, when, behold, they were already in the Precincts.