“Perhaps,” said Tilly, for occasionally the twins did launch out on independent lines of thought, “perhaps she loved the little boy too much, and so God took him to make her trust more just in Him.”
Flutters waited a moment, as though to consider matters; then he said, seriously, “No, I do not believe what you say at all. I believe the little boy caught the scarlet fever from somebody, and just died because he wasn't strong enough to get over it.”
“I don't believe it's right to think like that,” Hazel volunteered, for the Marberrys looked very much shocked, “it's not believing in God at all.”
Now Flutters had not set out upon this discussion without first having thought it out pretty clearly for himself, and so he was ready to answer—“You are mistaken, I think, Miss Hazel,” with the same little air of respect he always assumed in speaking to her, “because I believe in God just as much as any boy could, and yet I think that. I think God lets things happen instead of making them. He lets sickness and trouble come into the world, and so the sickness and trouble find the people out, and sickness kills them if their bodies are weak, and trouble kills them if their hearts and heads are, and—”
“But, Flutters,” interrupted Starlight, “don't you believe God watches over people and cares for 'em?”
“Why of course I do, Starlight. If I hadn't thought that I don't know what I would have done sometimes; but this is what I think—I think He watches over us by helping us to bear things, and to get the best out of 'em, and although I'm not very old, I'm old enough to know that sometimes there is more good in a trouble-some thing than in a thing that isn't troublesome at all. The people who are the kindest are often the people who have had the most trouble.”
“Well,” said Tilly Marberry, with considerable censure in her tone, “I never heard a little boy talk like this.”
“Neither did I,” sighed Milly, “and I should say such things ought to be left to grown-up people.”
“Well, then,” Flutters replied, “thinking 'bout things ought to be left to grown-up people, too, but it isn't. I may think different when I'm grown up, but I don't believe I'll ever think harder than I do now, and I can't help it either.”
Meanwhile Hazel had been ransacking her brain for a half-remembered text, and now she had it. “What do you make out of that verse about the Lord chastening whom He loves?” she asked.