Prev | Current Page 156 | Next

Middleton, Richard

"The Ghost Ship"

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.
How can one be good?
She swung round and looked in the dark corner by the piano; but the
Devil was not there.
And then she ran across the room to her father, and shaking his arm,
shouted, tremulously--
"Wake up, father! Wake up! The police are coming!"
And when the police came ten minutes later, accompanied by a very
proud and virtuous little boy, they heard a small shrill voice
crying, despairingly--
"The police, father! The police!"
But father would not wake.


The Biography Of A Superman
"O limed soul that struggling to be free
Art more engaged!"
Charles Stephen Dale, the subject of my study, was a dramatist
and, indeed, something of a celebrity in the early years of the
twentieth century.


Pages:
144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168