nd his
father--with a child's deadly penetration Dicky felt sure of it--was
careless about God.

This, by the way, had often puzzled and even frightened him. God, like
a great Sun, loomed so largely through Miss Quiney's scheme of things
(which it were more precise, perhaps, to term a fog) that for certain,
and apart from the sin of it and the assurance of going to hell, every
one removed from God must be sitting in pitch-darkness. But lo! when
his father talked everything became clear and distinct; there was no sun
at all to be seen, but there was also no darkness. On the contrary, a
hundred things grew visible at once, and intelligible and
common-sensible as Miss Quiney never contrived to present them.

This was puzzling; and, moreover, the child could not tolerate the
thought of his father's going to hell--to the flames and unbearable
thirst of it. To be sure Miss Quiney had never hinted this punishment
for her employer, or even a remote chance of it, and Dicky's good
breeding had kept him from confronting her major premise with the
particular instance of his father, although the conclusion of that
syllogism meant everything to him. Or it may be that he was afraid.
. . . Once, indeed, like Sindbad in the cave, he had seen a glimmering
chance of escape. It came when, reading in his Scripture lesson that
Christ consorted by choice with publicans and sinners, he had been
stopped by Miss Quiney with the information that "publican" meant
"a kind of tax-collector." "Like papa?" asked the child, and held his
breath for the answer. "Oh, not in the least like your dear papa,"
Miss Quiney made haste to assure him; "but a quite low class of person,
and, I should say, connected rather with the Excise. You must remember
that all this happened in the East, a long time ago." Poor soul! the
conscientiousness of her conscience (so to speak) had come to rest upon
turning such corners genteelly, and had grown so expert at it that she
scarcely breathed a sigh of relief. The child bent his head over the
book. His eyes were hidden from her, and she never guessed what hope
she had dashed.

It was a relief then--after being forced at one time or another to put
aside or pigeon-hole a hundred questions on which Miss Quiney's
teaching and his father's practice appeared at variance--to find a point
upon which the certainty of both converged. Heaven and hell might be
this or that; but in this world the poor deserved their plac