While thus musing in the quiet of the darkening chamber, Milly turned from her contemplation of the stars with the somewhat startling question:
‘Mr. Penrose, dun yo' think there'll be yethbobs (tufts of heather) i' heaven?’
‘That's bothered her a deal latly,’ broke in the mother, with a choking voice. ‘Hoo sez hoo noan cares for heaven if hoo cornd play on th' moors, and yer th' wind, and poo yethbobs when hoo gets there. What dun yo' think abaat it, Mr. Penrose?’
Mr. Penrose was not long from college, and the metaphysics and dogmatics of the schools were more to his mind than the poetry and religion of this moorland child. If asked to discourse on personality, or expound the latest phase of German thought, he would have felt himself at home. Here, however, he who was the idol of the class-room sat silenced and foolish before a peasant girl. True, he could enter into an argument for a future state, and show how spiritual laws opposed the mundane imagination of the child. But, after all, wherein was the use?—perhaps the child was nearer the truth than he was himself. He would leave her to her own pristine fancies.
In a moment Milly continued:
‘Th' Bible says, Mr. Penrose, that i' heaven there's a street paved wi' gowd (gold). Naa; I'd raither hev a meadow wi' posies, or th' moors when they're covered wi' yethbobs. If heaven's baan to be all streets, I'd as soon stop o' this side—though they be paved wi' gowd an' o'.’
‘Listen yo', how hoo talks, Mr. Penrose. Hoo's awlus talked i' that feshion sin' hoo were a little un. Aar owd minister used to co her “God's child.”’
Mr. Penrose was a young man, and thought that ‘Nature's child’ would be, perhaps, a more fitting name, but held his thought unuttered. Wishing Milly and her mother a ‘Good-night,’ he descended the old stone staircase to the kitchen, where Abraham Lord sat smoking and looking gloomily into the embers of the fire.
‘Has th' missus towd thee ought abaat aar Milly?’ somewhat sullenly interrogated the father.