“Is—­is this friend of yours—­Mr. Hoover—­in good health?”

“Fine—­weighs a hundred and eighty.  He and I have a ranch on the Wimmenuche—­only Hoover’s been doing most of the work while I thought about things.  I see that.  Hoover says one can’t do much for the world but laugh at it.  He has a theory of his own.  He maintains that God set this planet whirling, then turned away for a moment to start another universe or something.  He says that when the Creator glances back at us again, to find this poor, scrubby little earth-family divided over its clod, the strong robbing the weak in the midst of plenty for all—­enslaving them to starve and toil and fight, spending more for war than would keep the entire family in luxury; that when God looks closer, in his amazement, and finds that, next to greed, the matter of worshipping Him has made most of the war and other deviltry—­the hatred and persecution and killing among all the little brothers—­he will laugh aloud before he reflects, and this little ballful of funny, passionate insects will be blown to bits.  He says if the world comes to an end in his lifetime, he will know God has happened to look this way, and perhaps overheard a bishop say something vastly important about Apostolic succession or the validity of the Anglican Orders or Transubstantiation or ‘communion in two kinds’ or something.  He insists that a sense of humour is our only salvation—­that only those will be saved who happen to be laughing for the same reason that God laughs when He looks at us—­that the little Mohammedans and Christians and things will be burned for their blasphemy of believing God not wise and good enough to save them all, Mohammedan and Christian alike, though not thinking excessively well of either; that only those laughing at the whole gory nonsense will go into everlasting life by reason of their superior faith in God.”

“Of course that’s plausible, and yet it’s radical.  Hoover’s father was a bishop, and I think Hoover is just a bit narrow from early training.  He can’t see that lots of people who haven’t a vestige of humour are nevertheless worth saving.  I admit that saving them will be a thankless task.  God won’t be able to take very much pleasure in it, but in strict justice he will do it—­even if Hoover does regard it as a piece of extravagant sentimentality.”

A little later she went in.  She left him gazing far off into the night, filled with his message, dull to memory on the very scene that evoked in her own heart so much from the old days.  And as she went she laughed inwardly at a certain consternation the woman of her could not wholly put down; for she had blindly hurled herself against a wall—­the wall of his message.  But it was funny, and the message chained her interest.  She could, she thought, strengthen his resolution to give it out—­help him in a thousand ways.

As she fell asleep the thought of him hovered and drifted on her heart softly, as darkness rests on tired eyes.