She stopped.
"Ah! you were going to say something severe, then," said Geoffrey. "Just as well, though, to snub me sometimes. I don't mind it if nobody knows of it. But, about your father? Do you assist him in his studies?"
"I don't know that I assist him much. He does the hardest part of the work, and then has to explain it all to me. But I read to him a good deal when his eyes trouble him. After procuring a new book on the subject he never rests till he has exhausted it. We often worry through it together, taking turns at the reading. We have just finished Haeckel's last. We are wild about Haeckel."
"Yes, there is something very spiritual and orthodox about him," said Geoffrey. "And now that you must have got about as far as you can at present, how does the theory affect you?"
"Not at all, except to make me long to know more. If one could live to be two hundred years old, would it not be delightful?" said Margaret, looking far away up the street in front of her.
"But as to your religion?" asked Geoffrey. "Do you find that it makes any difference?"
"I don't think I was ever a very religious person," she replied, mistaking the word religious for 'churchy.' "I never was christened, nor confirmed, nor taught my catechism, nor anything of that sort. Nobody ever promised that I should renounce the devil and all his works, and so—and so I suppose I never have."
She looked at Geoffrey with the round eyes of guilelessness, slightly mirthful, as if, while deprecating this wretched state, she could still enjoy life.
Her companion could scarcely look away from her. There was such a combination of knowledge and purity and all-round goodness in her face that it fascinated him and induced him to say gravely:
"Indeed, one might have almost supposed that you had enjoyed these benefits from your earliest youth."