"You're a horrid girl, and you'll go to hell," said the boy, in disgust. But the silence was only broken by her sobbing. "I tell you he killed mother dead. You didn't cry a bit for mother; I did."
"Oh, let's ask mother! Let's ask mother! I know she won't want father to go to hell. Let's ask mother!"
"Mother's dead, and can't hear, you stupid," said the boy. "I keep on telling you. Come up and look."
They were both a little awed in mother's room. It was so quiet, and mother looked so funny. And first the girl shouted, and then the boy, and then they shouted both together, but nothing happened. The echoes made them frightened.
"Perhaps she's asleep," the girl said; so her brother pinched one of mother's hands—the white one, not the red one—but nothing happened, so mother was dead.
"Has she gone to hell?" whispered the girl.
"No! she's gone to heaven, because she's good. Only wicked people go to hell. And now I must go and tell the policeman. Don't you tell father where I've gone if he wakes up, or he'll run away before the policeman comes."
"Why?"
"So as not to go to hell," said the boy, with certainty; and they went downstairs together, the little mind of the girl being much perturbed because she was so wicked. What would mother say tomorrow if she had done wrong?
The boy put on his sailor hat in the hall. "You must go in there and watch," he said, nodding in the direction of the sitting-room. "I shall run all the way."