There _were_ things puzzling me, had puzzled me that very day, and I felt inclined to place them before my kind granny.
"What are Christians, grandmother?" I asked.
"My dear child," said my grandmother, "the word simply means the followers of Christ."
"Oh, it cannot mean _that_!" I cried, then stopped, abashed.
Grandmother raised her glasses from her eyes, placed them on her forehead, and stared at me in a puzzled way for a few seconds, then she said:
She was looking at me and I must answer, although fearing that I had hurt her feelings in some way by my abrupt contradiction.
"You said that the man, Christ, was very kind and gentle, and that He always thought of the good of others before His own," I continued. "Would _He_ pay thousands upon thousands for a grand church, in which to sit and be happy, and feel rich; and thousands upon thousands for a great organ to play sweet music and make Him forget the world's sorrows, while His brothers were too poor to pay for their board----?"
"No, he would _not_!" said grandmother, tears welling into her blue eyes.
Jumping from my seat I threw my arms around her neck and kissed her wrinkled, quivering face, saying, "_You_ are a follower of the Princely Man--of the good man, Christ, _you_ are, grandmother----"
A peremptory rap at the door stopped further conversation, and when I opened it, a lady was ushered in to see grandmother.
I was introduced to Mrs. Paton, of whom I had before heard my grandmother speak as "a great Christian worker," and whom I heard my Aunt Gwendolin denounce as a "tiresome crank, spoiling every one's comfort." I looked very earnestly at the lady, trying to fit her into the two definitions.
Mrs. Paton began almost at once to talk about the "temperance movement," and the "evils of intoxicating liquors," and "the selfishness of the onlooking world, who were not the real sufferers."
She left after the expiration of half an hour, and grandmother said to me: "You would not understand Mrs. Paton's remarks, my dear. You will have to be longer in the country before you know what is meant by the 'evils of intoxicating liquors.' Did you ever really see a drunken man?"
"No, grandmother," I said, "I never even _heard_ of one. _Drunk!_--what does it mean?"