“All the same, Molly, you have not answered my question.”
“Give me time, and I will answer it,” said Molly. “It sometimes happens that I take a message to say that a family have been ruined by no fault of their own. They are all weeping. … Instead of living in good rooms, they live anyhow. They even go without tea, and pray for any sort of help. … But, again, He cannot do what they want, for He knows what is good for them. They do not see it, but He, our Father, knows that if they lived in plenty they would be spoilt and go all to smithereens.”
“That’s true,” thought her mistress. “But why does she speak in such an offhand way when talking about God? ‘All to smithereens’ is not at all a proper expression! I shall certainly have to tell her of it, another time.”
“But that is not my question,” repeated the mother. “I ask, why … for what reason … did this God of yours want to take my boy?”
And the mother saw her Kóstya alive, and heard his childish laugh, clear as a bell. “Why should he be taken from me? If God can do that, He is a bad, wicked God, and I do not want Him, and do not wish to know Him.”
And, strange to say, Molly was no longer at all like Molly, but was some quite other, new strange indefinite creature, and she spoke, not aloud with her lips, but in some peculiar way that went straight into the mother’s heart.
“Pitiful, blind, self-confident creature!” said this being. “You see your Kóstya as he was a week ago, with firm elastic limbs and long curly hair, and his naive affectionate and sensible talk. But was he always like that? There was a time when you were glad when he could say ‘Dada’ and ‘Mamma,’ and knew one from the other. Before that, you were delighted when he stood up on his soft feet and toddled to a chair. Before that, you were all delighted when he crawled about the room like an animal; and