Page:In the days of the comet.djvu/351

 nd.

She kept to her queer old eighteenth-century version of religion, too, without a change. She had worn this particular amulet so long it was a part of her. Yet the Change was evident even in that persistence. I said to her one day, "But do you still believe in that hell of flame, dear mother? You--with your tender heart!"

She vowed she did.

Some theological intricacy made it necessary to her, but still--

She looked thoughtfully at a bank of primulas before her for a time, and then laid her tremulous hand impressively on my arm. "You know, Willie dear," she said, as though she was clearing up a childish misunderstanding of mine, "I don't think anyone will go there. I never did think that. . . ."

3

That talk stands out in my memory because of that agreeable theological decision of hers, but it was only one of a great number of talks. It used to be pleasant in the afternoon, after the day's work was done and before tone went on with the evening's study--how odd it would have seemed in the old time for a young man of the industrial class to be doing post-graduate work in sociology, and how much a matter of course it seems now!--to walk out into the gardens