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
reproach