“Jennie! Jennie! don’t speak so to the child.”
“He should hear it from some one, Alice, and there is no one else likely to tell him. Heaven knows how kindly I feel towards poor Dora, but I dare not palliate her sin. ‘Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers’ are the words of Scripture, and poor Dora has paid the penalty for disregarding them; happier so than if she had seen her sin visited upon others.”
“Jennie, my dear Jennie, indeed the horses will catch their death; you forget how cold it is,” cried her husband, in an agony.
Doctor Richards saw them gravely to the door, then returned to the parlor, where Alice, with white lips, was restlessly putting chairs in place, and tidying books and ornaments; and Louis was standing where he had been left, with flushed face and clinched baby hands.
“If God killed my mamma,” said Louis, as the doctor entered, “then I hate God!”
“Hush, Louis,” said the doctor. “I must take you home, little boy. After all, Alice, it don’t do to mix—states of life.”
“It would, if people were human,” she said in a stifled voice.
“Ah!” he said; “but some people are only—millionnaires.”
“Is God a millionnaire?” asked Louis, as they drove away.
“Mrs. Randolph thinks so,” said the doctor; “but there’s no such person, Louis, it’s all a myth—that is, a fairy-tale.”