Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/48

 Edward recalled that he had once made an effort to play on dearest grandmother's harp, that had been hers when she was a girl, and had been rapped over the knuckles for touching it. He didn't know.

"Once upon a time," said Alice, "there were gods and goddesses who danced and sang and got drunk and played tricks on people and each other. But they're all dead, and my father says that the new God will die too."

"When?" asked Edward.

"Of course father don't know exactly. But he sees signs and gives Him about seventy-five or a hundred years. Then there'll be another new God, and perhaps He'll approve of everything that the one we've got now disapproves of."

Edward had been taught to believe that for saying less than Alice had said people were sometimes struck dead right where they stood, as a lesson for them and for other people. And he finished the number nervously. To have the girl you were dancing with hit by a bolt from the blue would be altogether too close for comfort.

If he had repeated any of his conversation with Alice to Mrs. Eaton he would not have been allowed to dance with her any more, and Mrs. Eaton might have taken steps to have her expelled from the dancing school. But Edward kept the