"And the visiting!" I said. And then, alas! my tongue began to run away with me. He was falling back again into what I may call his company voice, and I pined to talk to the real Mr Crimble, little dreaming how soon that want was to be satiated.
"I sometimes wonder, do you know, if religion is made difficult enough."
"But I assure you," he replied, politely but firmly, "a true religion is exceedingly difficult. 'The eye of a needle'—we mustn't forget that."
"Ah, yes," said I warmly; "that 'eye' will be narrow enough even for a person with my little advantages. I remember my mother's cook telling me, when I was a child, that in the old days, really wicked people if they wanted to return to the Church, had to do so in a sheet, with ashes on their heads, you know, and carrying a long lighted candle. She said that if the door was shut against them, they died in torment, and went to Hell. But she was a Roman Catholic, like my grandmother."
Mr Crimble peered at me as if over a wall.
"I remember, too," I went on, "one summer's day as a very little girl I was taken to the evening service. And the singing—bursting out like that, you know, with the panting and the yowling of the organ, made me faint and sick; and I jumped right out of the window."
"Jumped out of the window!" cried my visitor in consternation.
"Yes, we were at the back. Pollie, my nursemaid, had put me up in the niche, you see; and I dragged her hand away. But I didn't hurt myself. The grass was thick in the churchyard; I fell light, and I had plenty of clothes on. I rather enjoyed it—the air and the tombstones. And though I had my gasps, the 'eye' seemed big enough when I was a child. But afterwards—when I was confirmed—I thought of Hell a good deal. I can't see it so plainly now. Wide, low, and black, with a few demons. That can't be right."
"My dear young lady!" cried Mr Crimble, as if shocked, "is it wise to attempt it? It must be admitted, of course, that if we do not take advantage of the benefits bestowed upon us by Providence in a Christian community, we cannot escape His displeasure. The absence from His Love."
"Yes," I said, looking at him in sudden intimacy, "I believe that." And I pondered a while, following up my own thoughts. "Have you ever read Mr Clodd's Childhood of the World, Mr Crimble?"