Basil had very vague notions as to what heaven was like; but, on reviewing all that he had heard of it, he came to the conclusion that if there was no whist there grandfather would be dull, and he had often heard him say: “There’s only one thing that I dread, and that’s boredom.” So Basil had decided that at all costs such a contingency must be avoided, and grandfather must teach the angels to play whist. “They can p’obably make more cards when they’ve seen them,” said Basil to himself, and pushed his little packet underneath the folded hands, kissed them, and turned to go as softly as he had come.
But the door opened at that moment, and his mother, candle in hand, stood on the threshold gazing at the little figure standing full in the strand of moonlight thrown across the carpet.
“What are you doing here, Basil?” she asked breathlessly.
“I came to give something to grandfather. Oh, don’t take it away from him!”
The passionate distress in the child’s voice moved her.
“I will take nothing away from him that you wish to give him. But what is it? Is it flowers?”
She came into the room, closing the door after her.
“I must see what it is,” she said very gently.
Basil stood where he was as though turned to stone. Would she take it away--or would she put it back? He could not see her, for he stood with his back to her, and seemed incapable of turning round. His mother, noting the disarrangement of the flowers, drew out the little packet, and, holding her candle close, read the inscription in the large uncertain writing:
“I’m sory it’s not a cleane pak, but I don’t know where they are.
He sat at one end of the seat, she at the other, and the seat was on the cliffs overlooking the sea at Wolsuth on the Suffolk coast. They say that if your eyes were strong enough you could see the coast of Holland; but even with telescopes no one has yet succeeded in doing that.
At first he hardly noticed her--she was so small and still and read her book so assiduously; but she could have passed a searching examination as to his appearance, for she had studied it carefully. She would have told you that he was tall, and thin, and dark, and “rather old”; that his beard was grey, though his hair was black and decidedly thin on the top; that his spectacles had gold rims and the eyes behind them were very kind; that his manner struck you as extremely grave and decorous: what impressed her most, however, was that big, dull, paper-covered book he was always reading. She was sure it was dull, for _she_ couldn’t read a word of it; it was in German--she knew that much, and she had tried to pronounce the title to herself in bed at night, but never came near it at all, for it looked like this: “Mendelejeef Chemie,” and it would take a very sharp little girl of ten to make much out of that.