Jemmie slipped down on the floor, and made a very alarmed bow, with his great eyes staring deprecatingly in the visitor's face.
"I'm charmed to make your acquaintance. What grace and ease! It's perfectly charming! I'm too much honoured, Mr. Jemmie. And so exquisitely got up, too! There's only one little toilet refinement I would venture to recommend. The worthy lady, Mrs. Chalks, who contributes bacon to this house, and, I presume, candles—could, I dare say, also supply another luxury, with which you are not so well acquainted, called soap—one of the few perfectly safe cosmetics. Pray try it; you'll find it soluble in water. And, ho? reading too! What have you been reading out of that exquisite little volume?"
"Catechism, please sir," answered the little girl.
"Ho, Catechism? Delightful! What a wonderful people we English are!" The latter reflection was made for his own entertainment, and he laughed over it in an undertone. "Then your aunt teaches you the art of godliness? You've read about Babel, didn't you?—the accomplishment of getting up to heaven is so nice!"
"Sunday school, sir, please," said the girl.
"Oh, it's there you learn it? Well, I shall ask you only one question in your Catechism, and that's the first—what's your name?"
"Lucy Maria."
"Well, Lucy Maria and Mr. Jemmie, I trust your theological studies may render you at last as pious as I am. You know how death and sin came into the world, and you know what they are. Sin is doing anything on earth that's pleasant, and death's the penalty of it. Did you ever see any one dead, my sweet child—not able to raise a finger or an eyelid? rather a fix, isn't it?—and screwed up in a stenching box to be eaten by worms—all alone, under ground? You'll be so, egad, and your friend, Jemmie, there, perhaps before me—though I'm an old boy. Younkers go off sometimes by the score. I've seen 'em trundled out in fever and plague, egad, lying in rows, like plucked chickens in a poulterer's shop. And they say you have scarlatina all about you here, now; bad complaint, you know, that kills the little children. You need not frighten yourselves though, because it must happen, sooner or later—die you must. It's the penalty, you know, because Eve once eat an apple."
"Yes, sir."
"Rather hard lines on us, isn't it? She eat an apple, and sin, and death, and colic—I never eat an apple in consequence—colic came into the world, and cider, as a consequence—the worst drink ever invented by the devil. And now go on and learn your Church Catechism thoroughly, and you'll both turn into angels. Upon my life, I think I see the feathers beginning to sprout from your shoulders already. You'll have wings, you know, if all goes right, and tails for anything I know."