"I'm very sorry that my child should get into such a passion—or vexation, whichever it may be—with the whooping-cough; for you say that you suppose the disease was under the control of God, so that it must have been rather an innocent sort of thing, after all. If you should fall into the mill-pond, and a man standing on the shore should let you struggle a while before he helped you out, you would get vexed, wouldn't you?"
"I guess I should."
"You would certainly have as much reason for vexation as you have had this morning. But would you be likely to get vexed with the water?"
"Why, no, mama. I should be provoked with the man, because he didn't help me out."
"I thought so. Well, then, don't you think you found fault with God, in this matter of the whooping-cough?"
"It may be so."
"It must be so."
Little Julian was a thoughtful child. He saw that this spirit of peevishness was very wrong, and that he had murmured against God. He told his mother that he hoped he should not do so any more. He was silent for some minutes, and then said—
"There is one thing I would like to know about, mother; but it may be I ought not to ask."
"What is it, Julian?" asked his mother.