"No more I was," Beth answered casually.
"Yet you knew him all the same?" Aunt Victoria ventured reproachfully.
"Aunt Victoria," said Beth, "did the Lord die for Sammy?"
"Ye—yes," said Aunt Victoria, hesitating, not because she doubted the fact, but because she did not know what use Beth would make of it.
"Then why can't I know him?" Beth asked.
"Oh, be—because Sammy does not live as if he were grateful to the Lord."
"If he did, would he be a gentleman?" Beth asked.
"Yes," Aunt Victoria answered decidedly.
Beth stopped snipping, and looked at her as if she were looking right through her, and out into the world beyond. Then she pursed up her mouth and shook her head.
"That won't hold water," she said. "If a man must live like the Lord to be a gentleman, what is Uncle James? And if living like the Lord makes a man a gentleman, why don't we call on old Job Fisher?"