For the moment Flutters looked puzzled. The Marberrys signalled each other by elevating their eyebrows as to the meaning of this last big word of Hazel's, and asked, simultaneously, “What's chastening?” Then for the moment Hazel looked puzzled, but Starlight came to her rescue.
“I think it's taking away from a fellow lots of people whom he loves. Having his mother die, and then his father, and then his little sister, and things like that.”
This remark of Starlight's flashed the light again in upon Flutters's mind, and he found to his glad surprise that he was thoroughly prepared to answer Hazel after all; but he began by asking Starlight a question.
“But why, Starlight, does the Lord do that, do you think?”
“Why—so as to make a fellow resigned. I think that's what they call it. To make him just give up his own will.”
“Excuse me,” said Flutters, with the air of one whose convictions are very strong, “but I don't believe that either. I don't believe the Lord would take my father and mother and sister out of the world just because He loved me and wanted to make me better. I don't believe I'm important enough for that, nor anybody else. If they all died close together I should think it was because God's time had come for them, quite outside of me, and that then the thing for me to do, the thing that He meant, was just to bear it as bravely as I could.”
This was a long speech for Flutters, but the children were sufficiently interested to follow every word of it, and Hazel asked, when Flutters ceased, “But then what does the chastening verse mean? It's in the Bible, and I suppose you believe the Bible?”
“Of course I believe it, but I know chastening doesn't mean anything like that. Perhaps it means letting all sorts of bothersome things come so as to have you get the best of them. A person what had never had any bother wouldn't be much of a person, I suppose.”
“Well, we have had a talk,” said Starlight, for at this point the discussion seemed to come to a natural close; and besides, they had almost reached the Boniface gate. A moment later the Marberrys took an affectionate leave of Hazel, with a “Good-bye” to Starlight and Flutters, and trudged on to the rectory, half a mile farther up the road, wondering, perhaps, if what Flutters had said had been wrong, and provided they could remember it, if they ought not to tell their father.
“Heigh-ho!” sighed Hazel, carefully putting away her Sunday cloak and hat, “and to think that I thought the mulattoes were a savage tribe! Why, really, I believe I never knew a boy who seemed to think so right down into a thing as Flutters.”