"Well, about the next world. Are you as sure as you seem to be?"
Elizabeth did not speak for a moment, then she nodded her head gravely.
"Yes," she said, "I'm sure. You can't live with Father and not be sure."
"It seems to me so extraordinary. I mean to say, I never heard people talk about such things before. And you all know such chunks of the Bible—even Buff. Why do you laugh?"
"At your exasperated tone! You seem to find our knowledge of the Bible almost indecent. Remember, please, that you have never lived before in Scots clerical circles, and that ministers' children are funny people. We are brought up on the Bible and the Shorter Catechism—at least the old-fashioned kind are. In our case, the diet was varied by an abundance of poetry and fairy tales, which have given us our peculiar daftness. But don't you take any interest in the next world?"
Arthur Townshend screwed his short-sighted eyes in a puzzled way, as he said:
"I don't know anything about it."
"As much as anybody else, I daresay," said Elizabeth. "Don't you like that old song I sang to Peggy?—
'Thy gardens and thy gallant walks
Continually are green....'
One has a vision of smooth green turf, and ladies 'with lace about their delicate hands' walking serenely; and gentlemen ruffling it with curled wigs and carnation silk stockings. Such a deliciously modish Heaven! Ah well! Heaven will be what we love most on earth. At Etterick——"