"When my meat-body," so ran his thought, "is tired out after a long day's work, and can't be rode any longer, I turns it in for a watch below. Sometimes I stays all night in my meat-body, and has funny mixed-up dreams, the ones which I remembers afterwards. Sometimes I gets out of the meat-body and comes straight into this here world which Rain calls Dreamland. I've got my dream-body for life in the dream-world—so that's all clear.
"But suppose my animal-body gets wore out, or dies, or happens to get killed, so as I'm drove out, and can't get in again—that's what they calls Death. It's bound to happen sooner or later, and it doesn't matter anyway. The animal body won't be needed any longer, and so it can be took away, and buried, or burned, or drowned, and there's an end of that.
"I've got this dream-body, which is just as solid, and comfy. It looks just the same, and is a deal more useful. If I've been good on earth I'll have a fine time in this dream-world. If I've been bad I'll have a rotten time, and it will serve me right. But as I've promised mother to be good, and means to be good always, there's nothing to be afraid of. So that's all clear.
"The next part ain't so clear. Rain knows all about everything, and she says this: On Earth and in Dreamland we have a job, one job, to grow a soul. That soul is another body made of thoughts and feelings. It's called the spiritual body. It may be made of good thoughts and good feelings like mother's, or of bad thoughts and bad feelings like father's. When it is grown up, and all ready to sail, it clears for the port where it belongs. It leaves this dream-body, crumbled away into dust or gas, and it goes to the place where it will be at home. It is spiritual. It goes to the home of bad people in Hell, until it learns to pray, or of good people in Heaven. Mother is going there, and I'm to be awful lonesome, because I can't go with her, and I can't follow her there until I've growed a spiritual body fit to be seen in Heaven by the angels.
"All that is what the Bible means, if we could only understand things better. It's what Religion means. Mother's a Christian, and Rain's a heathen, but whatever sort of lamp we has to light the way, it's the same voyage. If we're good it's fine weather, if we're bad it's storms, so if a fellow has any sense at all, he'll jolly well do his best.
"That seems to be all clear."
"Have you quite finished?" asked the Padre. To look more impressive, he put horn spectacles upon his thin, high nose, but in order to see he had to glance over the top of them as he turned to bend his vision upon Storm, like a reproachful rabbit surveying a rotten turnip. "Because," he said peevishly, "if you had any sense at all, you'd know that your loud thoughts disturb me at my work."
Storm had forgotten that here in Dreamland no thoughts can be hidden, but all are heard by everybody who listens.
"I wants to go with mother," he answered sadly. "I comes to you for help 'cause you're a parson."
"Can't be done," said the Padre. "You haven't got a spirit-body yet. You're busy growing one and so am I. That's what we're here for."