"He is dead," she said, slowly, answering the last question first. "That is, he is what you call dead. But, of course, you know as well as I do that that doesn't mean what it seems to; it means simply that he doesn't live in the same place that he once did. He went to heaven to live ever so many years ago."
She waited to feel the effect of this announcement. The boys were silent and grave. They had evidently heard of heaven, and had some measure of respect for the name. The new teacher did not know what to say next. The boys helped her. The younger one drew a heavy sigh.
"Well, all I've got to say is, I wish he was alive now," he said, in a regretful tone, "'cause my mother has been sick longer than thirty-eight years; she has been sick about all her life, and she is real bad now, so she can't walk at all. I s'pose he could cure her if he was here."
"I suppose he could cure her now." Flossy said this slowly, reverently, looking earnestly at the boy, hoping to convey to him a sense of her meaning. He looked utterly puzzled. Light began to dawn on the face of the older boy.
"She's been tellin' us one of them Bible stories," he said, speaking not to Flossy, but to his companion, and assuming an injured air, as if a wrong had been done them.
Flossy spoke quickly:
"Of course I have. I thought you wanted to hear something that really happened, and not a made up story." This seemed to be an appeal to their dignity, and they eyed her reflectively.
"How do you know it happened?" ventured the younger one.
Flossy gave a rapid and animated answer.
"There are about a hundred reasons why I know it; it would take me all day to tell you half of them. But one is, that I read it in a book which good men who know a great deal, and who have been studying all their lives to find out about it, say they know is true; and I believe what they tell me about Washington and Lincoln and other men whom I never saw, so I ought to believe them when they tell me about this man."