'If I only knew that God was as good as--that woman, I should die content.'
Robert heard words of blasphemy from the mouth of an angel, but his respect for Ericson compelled a reply.
'But surely ye dinna think God's nae as guid as she is? Surely he's as good as he can be. He is good, ye ken.'
'Oh, yes. They say so. And then they tell you something about him that isn't good, and go on calling him good all the same. But calling anybody good doesn't make him good, you know.'
'Then ye dinna believe 'at God is good, Mr. Ericson?' said Robert, choking with a strange mingling of horror and hope.
'I didn't say that, my boy. But to know that God was good, and fair, and kind--heartily, I mean, not half-ways, and with ifs and buts--my boy, there would be nothing left to be miserable about.'
In a momentary flash of thought, Robert wondered whether this might not be his old friend, the repentant angel, sent to earth as a man, that he might have a share in the redemption, and work out his own salvation. And from this very moment the thoughts about God that had hitherto been moving in formless solution in his mind began slowly to crystallize.
The next day, Eric Ericson, not without a piece in ae pouch and money in another, took his way home, if home it could be called where neither father, mother, brother, nor sister awaited his return. For a season Robert saw him no more.
As often as his name was mentioned, Miss Letty's eyes would grow hazy, and as often she would make some comical remark.
'Puir fallow!' she would say, 'he was ower lang-leggit for this warld.'
'Ay, he was a braw chield. But he canna live. His feet's ower sma'.'
'Saw ye ever sic a gowk, to mak sic a wark aboot sittin' doon an' haein' his feet washed, as gin that cost a body onything!'
One of the first warm mornings in the beginning of summer, the boy woke early, and lay awake, as was his custom, thinking. The sun, in all the indescribable purity of its morning light, had kindled a spot of brilliance just about where his grannie's head must be lying asleep in its sad thoughts, on the opposite side of the partition.
He lay looking at the light. There came a gentle tapping at his window. A long streamer of honeysuckle, not yet in blossom, but alive with the life of the summer, was blown by the air of the morning against his window-pane, as if calling him to get up and look out. He did get up and look out.