“It was very, very bad of me,” said the child, with perfect seriousness, her eyes slowly filling; “but Nello is such a little fellow—he did not know—— ”
“Then why did you do it, Lilias?”
The child looked up searchingly into her face. “I think it must have been the devil,” she said, with portentous gravity, drawing a heavy sigh.
An impulse of laughter came to Miss Musgrave in the midst of her annoyance; but partly she restrained it for high moral reasons, and partly she was still too much annoyed to give way to laughter. “What do you know about—the devil?” she said. “I think it was your own little mischievous hands, and your curiosity.”
“Oh, I know a great deal about him. Mr. Pennithorne told us on Sunday; and Martuccia must be of the same religion as Mr. Pen, for she worships him too,” said Lilias, aware of the advantages of digression when things were so serious as they were now.
“Worships him, Lilias! You must not use such words.”
“They are always thinking of him, and they say he does everything. They are very, very afraid of him,” said Lilias seriously, “and so am I—he can do whatever he pleases; but I cannot think he is as strong as God.”
“And it was he who made you spoil my papers——?”
“Oh, Mary, not Nello—only me. Nello is such a little fellow, he did not mean it—he did not know what he was doing—— ”
“And did you?”