They gave me more room in the bed forthwith, and then the elder
sat up and expressed his sense of my awfulness. I was already a little
frightened at my temerity, but when he asked me categorically to unsay
what I had said, what could I do but confirm my repudiation?
"There's no hell," I said, "and no eternal punishment. No God would be
such a fool as that."
My elder cousin cried aloud in horror, and the younger lay scared, but
listening. "Then you mean," said my elder cousin, when at last he could
bring himself to argue, "you might do just as you liked?"
"If you were cad enough," said I.
Our little voices went on interminably, and at one stage my cousin got
out of bed and made his brother do likewise, and knelt in the night
dimness and prayed at me. That I found trying, but I held out valiantly.
"Forgive him," said my cousin, "he knows not what he sayeth."
"You can pray if you like," I said, "but if you're going to cheek me in
your prayers I draw the line."
The last I remember of that great discussion was my cousin deploring the
fact that he "should ever sleep in the same bed with an Infidel!"
The next day he astonished me by telling the whole business to his
father.
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