"Take me out quick! I'm goin' to bust—I'll bust wide open I tell ye!"
She rose sternly, seized his arm and led him a half mile into the woods. He kept looking back and laughing softly.
She gazed at him sorrowfully:
"I'm ashamed of you, Boy! How could you do such a thing!"
"I just couldn't help it!"
He sat down on a stone and laughed again.
"What makes the fools holler so?" he asked through his tears.
"They are praying God to forgive their sins."
"But why holler so loud? He ain't deaf—is He? You said that God's in the sun and wind and dew and rain—in the breath we breathe. Ain't He everywhere then? Why do they holler at Him?"
The mother turned away to hide a smile she couldn't keep back, and a cloud overspread her dark face. Surely this was an evil sign—this spirit of irreverent levity in the mind of a child so young. What could it mean? She had forgotten that she had been teaching him to think, and didn't know, perhaps, that he who thinks must laugh or die.