Diana's children are of a distinctly religious turn of mind. I think
most children are, and what wonderful, curious thing their religion
is! Looking back to my own childhood, I remember thinking, or rather
knowing, that the Holy Ghost was a Shetland shawl. We called our shawls
"comforters"; we wore them when we went to parties in the winter. "I will
not leave you comfortless," could mean nothing else. To complete the
illusion, we had in the nursery a picture of the Pentecost, the Holy
Ghost descending in the form of a cloudy substance, not unlike a
Shetland shawl. I was so sure that I was right, that I never thought of
asking any one. When I grew older and told my mother, she said, "But why
didn't you ask me, darling?" forgetting that when a child knows a thing
it never asks; when in doubt it will ask, but not when it knows. It is
a difficult and dangerous thing to shake a child's belief, and a
pity, too. For if we could all believe as simply as a child does, how
different it would make life! If Diana has a fault, it is that she
takes her children too seriously. She thinks it is wrong to tell them,
"Children should be seen and not heard," simply because they have asked
a question she can't answer. Aunts have been known to do it as a last
resource, on occasions of great danger.
Hugh wants to know if God put in the quack before he made the duck. It
is difficult, isn't it, to answer that sort of question?
On another occasion he asked Betty if God was alive. Betty, eager to
instruct, said, "My dear Hugh, God is a Spirit."
"Then we can boil our milk on him." That was a poser for Betty.
Diana was at a loss, too, when Hugh announced his intention of going to
Heaven. She asked him what he would do when he got there. I thought the
question a little unwise at the time. "Oh!" said Hugh, "stroll round
with Jesus, I suppose, and have a shot at the rabbits."
Diana's position was a difficult one. It was this: if she told Hugh
there were no rabbits in Heaven, he wouldn't pray to go there; and if
she said there was no shooting in Heaven, Hugh would know for certain
that his father wouldn't want to go there, and it wouldn't do for Hugh
to think his father didn't want to go to Heaven. It was a difficulty,
but Hugh's Heaven was or is a very real and very happy place to him. It
is strangely like Hames; and isn't the home of every happy child very
near to Heaven? Surely it lies at its very gates, which we could see
if it was not for the mountains which intervene, those beautiful snow
mountains, which foolish grown-ups call clouds.
Diana has come triumphantly out of situations more difficult, and she
will no doubt surmount those connected with the spiritual upbringing of
Hugh, Betty, and Sara.
It is the custom of Diana to read the Bible every morning with her
children, and they resent any deviation from custom.
After breakfast on the particular Sunday over which this shooting-party
extended, Hugh marched through the hall (where most of us were
assembled) with his Bible under his arm, followed by Betty, carrying
a smaller Bible. Hugh's seemed particularly cumbersome. He cast a
reproachful glance at his mother and her guests, and said to Betty,
"I will teach you, darling."
Betty said, "Can you, Hugh?" and he said, "Rather!"
Into the drawing-room he stumped, followed by the impressed Betty.
"You may come, Aunt Woggles," he said, "if you don't talk."
I promised not to talk, and sat down to write letters.
Hugh sat down on the sofa and Betty plumped down beside him. She
carefully arranged her muslin skirts over her long black-stockinged
legs, and then told Hugh to begin.
"What's it going to be about?" she asked.
"All sorts of things," said Hugh grandly. "Perhaps about Adam and
Eve, and Jonah and the whale, and Samson and Elijah. Do you know the
diff'rence between Enoch and Elijah? That's the first thing."
"No, I don't," said Betty reluctantly.
"Well, darling, you must remember the diff'rence is that Enoch only
walked with God, but the carriage was sent for Elijah!"
"Was it a carriage and pair, Hugh?"
"More, I expect."
"What next, Hugh?"
"We'll just look until we find something." And Hugh opened the Bible.
"It's upside down," whispered Betty.
Hugh assumed the expression my spaniel puts on when he meets a dog
bigger than himself--an expression of extreme earnestness of purpose
combined with a desire to look neither to the right nor to the left, but
to get along as fast as he can.
Hugh assumed an immense dignity and looked straight in front of him,
just to show Betty he was thinking and had not heard what she said,
while he turned the Bible round.
"Go on, Hugh," said Betty humbly, feeling it was she who had made the
mistake. How often do men make women feel this!
"Now, Betty," he said, "you must listen properly and not talk, because
it's a proper lesson, just like mother gives us when visitors aren't
here." A pause, then Hugh said in a very solemn voice, "You know,
darling, Jesus would have been born in the manger, but the dog in the
manger wouldn't let him!"
I stole out of the room.
"You don't disturb us, Aunt Woggles," called out Hugh; "you truthfully
don't."
Hugh had evidently told all he knew, for in a few minutes he came out of
the drawing-room and joined us in the hall. "We've done!" he exclaimed;
"we've had our lesson all the same."
"I am sorry, Hugh," said Diana.
He slipped his hand in hers as a sign of forgiveness, and by way of
making matters quite right, I said, "You know, Hugh, mothers must look
after their guests. Their children are always with them, but friends
only occasionally."
Why do aunts interfere? Retribution speedily follows.
"Visitors are mostly always here," said Hugh plaintively. "When you have
children of your own, Aunt Woggles, then--"
"A fox, a fox, Hugh!" cried some one.
He rushed to the window.
"That's two foxes today that weren't there when I looked," said Hugh; "I
shan't look next time."
This was a desperate state of affairs; an attack might come at any time,
and we should have exhausted our ammunition.
"The best thing," said Diana, "is for those who are going to church to
get ready."
Betty and Hugh were of course going; Sara wanted to, but those in
authority deemed it wiser that she should wait till she was older.
This offended her very much, as did any reference to her age. But the
decision was a wise one: she prayed too fervently, she sang too lustily,
and she talked too audibly, to admit of reverent worship on the part of
the younger members of the congregation, and of the older ones, too, I
am afraid.
One memorable Sunday she did go to church, as a great treat; and
when the hymn--"Peace, perfect peace" was given out, a beatific smile
illumined her face, and with her hymn-book upside-down she was preparing
to sing, when Diana said,--whispered rather--You don't know this,
darling."
"Yes, I do, mummy, peace in the valley of Bong."
Betty walked to church with me. "Aunt Woggles," she said, "you know the
gentleman in the Bible who lived inside the whale?"
"Yes, darling," I said, "I do remember." My heart sank at the
difficulties presented by Jonah as gentleman.
"Well," she said, "what dye suppose he did without candles in the dark
passages of the whale?"
Betty evidently pictured the dark passages of the whale to be what
Haines used to be before electric light was installed. The whale, like
a house, must be modernized to meet the requirements of the day. When
Betty starts asking questions, she mercifully quickly follows one with
another, and does not wait for answers. The interior economy of the
whale suggested various trains of thought, and she went skipping along
beside me, or rather in front of me, propounding the most astounding
theories. I was quite glad when Mr. Dudley and Hugh caught us up.
"You did come along fast, old man," said Mr. Dudley.
"It wasn't me, it was you," panted Hugh. "It truthfully was, Aunt
Woggles, and he wasn't going to church at all till I told him you were
going. I'm awfully out of breath because he wanted to catch you up, so
it wasn't me all the time."
I was sorry Hugh and Mr. Dudley had caught us up.
Mr. Dudley murmured something about "Young ruffian," and I felt it my
duty as well as my pleasure to tell Hugh not to talk so much.
"I 'sect you want to sit next my Aunt Woggles, don't you?" said Hugh
to Mr. Dudley; "but you can't, because I said, 'bags I sit next Aunt
Woggles in church' before she came to stay, ever so long before,
before two Christmases ago, I should think it was, or nearly before two
Christmases ago!"
Betty's grasp on my hand tightened, and I returned it with a reassuring
pressure, as much as to say, "There are two sides to every aunt in
church, dear Betty; it is a comfort to know that."
"I may sit next you, mayn't I?"
"Yes, Betty," I said.
"You are very rosy, Aunt Woggles," said Hugh. "Do you love my Aunt
Woggles?" he continued, dancing backward in front of Mr. Dudley.
"Of course he does," I said boldly, taking the bull by the horns.
"Mr. Dudley loves even his enemies, especially on Sundays."
Hugh looked puzzled, and pondered. Before he had come to any definite
conclusion as to how this affected Mr. Dudley's feelings towards me, we
reached the lichgate, where we found the rest of the party awaiting us.
We all separated: Diana took Betty, who gazed at me mournfully, but
was too loyal to her mother to say anything; Hugh gave a series of
triumphant jumps, which added pain to Betty's already disappointed
expression.
In church I found myself allotted to what we call the overflow pew,
which is at right angles to the family pews and in full view of them.
It is the children's favorite pew only, I imagine, because they don't
always sit there. Hugh sat very close to me, and kept on giving little
wriggles and gazing up at me, then at Mr. Dudley, and snuggling closer
to me as if to emphasize the superiority of his position over that of
Mr. Dudley.
"Hugh," I whispered, "you must behave."
"He didn't sit next you, after all," he whispered.
I say whispered, but must explain that Hugh's whisper is a very
far-reaching thing. He loves a victory. I hope that when he grows up he
will be a generous victor. He says he is going to be a dangerous man; I
can believe it.
Betty, the vanquished one, stared solemnly in front of her, not deigning
to notice Hugh's triumph. What pleasure is there to children in sitting
next to some particular person in church? I remember, as a child, it was
a matter of earnest prayer during the week that on Sunday I might sit
next, some particular person in church. "And, O Lord, if it be for my
good, let me sit next the door." A child's religion is a very real thing
to him, and not only a Saturday-to-Monday thing.
I looked at Betty's serious little face and wished that I could for one
moment read her thoughts. Her eyes, such lovely eyes, were fixed on
the preacher's face. What did his sermon convey to her? It was a
particularly uninteresting one, I remember, an appeal on behalf of the
curates' fund. Her eyes never left his face--such solemn, searching,
truthful eyes. I think a child like Betty should not be allowed to go
to church on such occasions, for what is the use of preaching against
matrimony on the one hand, and that, I suppose, is what the moral of
such a sermon should be,--and on the other hand holding up an incentive
to matrimony in the very alluring shape of Betty? For, personally, I
think Betty would be a very wonderful possession for any curate to have.
Hugh was growing restless and I was bearing the brunt of it. Nannie,
feeling for me, leaned over from the back pew and said, "Don't rest your
head on your Aunt Woggles."
"I came to church on purpose to rest my head on my Aunt Woggles's
chest," said Hugh, again in what he calls a whisper. A moment later, he
asked, "Is it done?"
It was, and he jumped up.
"May I sit next you next Sunday, Aunt Woggles?" he said, so soon as we
got outside the church door.
"No, Hugh," I said.
"I bet I do, all the same," he said.
"Aunt Woggles," said Betty, as we walked home, "I collect for the
prevention of children; do you suppose Mr. Dudley would give me a
penny?"
"I am sure he would, darling, but it is the prevention of cruelty to
children--the prevention of cruelty."
"That's such a long thing to say, Aunt Woggles, don't you suppose he
would understand if I did say it a little wrong?"
"Perhaps, darling, but it is always best to say things right."
"Yes, I will, but I was only supposing, supposing I didn't."
At luncheon Diana cautioned Betty against swallowing a fish-bone. "You
might die, darling, if you did."
"Then I shall swallow every single bone I can," announced Betty.
"But, darling," said Diana, "why do you say that? You don't want to die.
You are quite happy, aren't you?"
"Yes, I'm very happy, but I want to die, all the same."
"Oh, darling, don't say that," said Diana; "there is a great deal for
you to do in this world before you die."
"Yes, but you see, darling," said Betty, "if I don't die soon, I shall
be too old to sit on Jesus' knee."
Diana is very particular about the children's manners, and Hugh came
face to face with a great difficulty a moment later, over his ginger
beer. "If I don't say I thank you, mother doesn't like it, and if I do
say I thank you, Bindon stops pouring."