“Mother’s dead, and can’t hear, you stupid,” said the boy.  “I keep on telling you.  Come up and look.”

They were both a little awed in mother’s room.  It was so quiet, and mother looked so funny.  And first the girl shouted, and then the boy, and then they shouted both together, but nothing happened.  The echoes made them frightened.

“Perhaps she’s asleep,” the girl said; so her brother pinched one of mother’s hands—­the white one, not the red one—­but nothing happened, so mother was dead.

“Has she gone to hell?” whispered the girl.

“No! she’s gone to heaven, because she’s good.  Only wicked people go to hell.  And now I must go and tell the policeman.  Don’t you tell father where I’ve gone if he wakes up, or he’ll run away before the policeman comes.”

“Why?”

“So as not to go to hell,” said the boy, with certainty; and they went downstairs together, the little mind of the girl being much perturbed because she was so wicked.  What would mother say tomorrow if she had done wrong?

The boy put on his sailor hat in the hall.  “You must go in there and watch,” he said, nodding in the direction of the sitting-room.  “I shall run all the way.”

The door banged, and she heard his steps down the path, and then everything was quiet.

She tiptoed into the room, and sat down on the floor, and looked at the back of the chair in utter distress.  She could see her father’s elbow projecting on one side, but nothing more.  For an instant she hoped that he wasn’t there—­hoped that he had gone—­but then, terrified, she knew that this was a piece of extreme wickedness.

So she lay on the rough carpet, sobbing hopelessly, and seeing real and vicious devils of her brother’s imagining in all the corners of the room.

Presently, in her misery, she remembered a packet of acid-drops that lay in her pocket, and drew them forth in a sticky mass, which parted from its paper with regret.  So she choked and sucked her sweets at the same time, and found them salt and tasteless.

Ray was gone a long time, and she was a wicked girl who would go to hell if she didn’t do what he told her.  Those were her prevailing ideas.

And presently there came a third.  Ray had said that if her father woke up he would run away, and not go to hell at all.  Now if she woke him up—.

She knew this was dreadfully naughty; but her mind clung to the idea obstinately.  You see, father had always been so fond of mother, and he would not like to be in a different place.  Mother wouldn’t like it either.  She was always so sorry when father did not come home or anything.  And hell is a dreadful place, full of things.  She half convinced herself, and started up, but then there came an awful thought.

If she did this she would go to hell for ever and ever, and all the others would be in heaven.

She hung there in suspense, sucking her sweet and puzzling it over with knit brows.