"But you must, if you want to be a true defender of your cocoanut creed. For all the others are outsiders. Those pudding, turkey, grapes, custard and ice cream people don't believe in your pie."
Cyrus slowly shook his head and pushed out his lips. "I couldn't despise people for eating things they liked."
"Neither could I, Cyrus. So, for the present, anyway, we will eat whatever we want to. And we are just as sure of going to Heaven as if we stuck to one kind of pie."
"Yes, we will," declared the invalid, and in his face and voice had come the enthusiasm of fresh hopes and a new life. "If our minister," he said, "would talk like that in the pulpit, about roast turkey and ice cream and things to eat, it would be more—more interesting. Wouldn't it?"
Dr. Alton bent over Cyrus and kissed him good night. "Yes, but he wouldn't dare—unless his congregation consisted of empty boys."
The father's diagnosis was correct: his treatment a success. During that short half hour the patient had been converted from a terrified sinner to a hopeful gourmand. The anxious look had left his eyes. The lips were smiling.
And that night, instead of fitful wakings interspersed with dreams of hell and Hebrew prophets, of death, damnation and eternal punishment, he slept a solid, tranquil sleep. And such dreams as came were happy dreams. He dreamed of puddings of the richest kind, of turkeys all stuffed and ready; of various pies, of custard, of pastry, and of ice cream, all of which he ate, and ate—and ate. And lying flat upon his stomach on a sponge-cake raft he floated in a sea of pineapple sherbet. He would bite off edges of the raft, then, with his whole face in the boundless ocean, he would suck up long gulps of this divine material. And his permanent residence was in a cocoanut palace against a mountain of vanilla ice cream.
When morning came, and he awoke and sat up in bed, he was himself again. In the sunshine of his room the bottomless pit had lost its menace. His spirit, refreshed by slumber and now guided by his nose, ignored the fires of Purgatory and was hovering over the more friendly heat of Joanna's kitchen stove.
A few days later, when he was curled up at one end of the sofa with a book, he asked: "What is the transmigration of souls?"