Hazel started forward. “Please don’t blame Scip, Mr. Lee,” she said. “He’s been taking care of me.” And turning to the boy she added: “Thank you, Scip.”
Something in her speech, perhaps the unfamiliar “Mr. Lee,” quieted the old man. He turned away from his eldest son who went to help with the baby.
Hazel was silent on the way home, for she felt that this time Granny could not share her thoughts. The old woman was happy at having seen her friends and hummed a hymn. Perhaps, had Hazel given her her confidence, she would have said that hell was just a place to scare people with: that the Lord never meant the devil should keep anyone there.
They reached home before the Lees whom they saw coming slowly behind, Scipio with the baby in his arms.
Granny gave Hazel a good-night kiss, but the little girl did not go at once to bed. For some time, wrapped in her warm shawl, she sat at the window, looking out upon the stars. They rested her perturbed spirit. At length, a smile lighted her face. A new thought had come to her.
“My own father wouldn’t have hurt anybody,” she whispered. “Not even if they were wicked. And God is my Father in Heaven.”
And comforted, she knelt and said the Lord’s prayer, and asked God to bless her mother and Charity and Mr. and Mrs. Perkins and Granny and—and Scip.
CHAPTER VIII
BROTHER AND SISTER
“Do you know, Scip,” Hazel confided, “I’m dreadfully afraid of pigs.”
“They won’t hurt you,” Scip replied.