stopped. The word seemed too awful in connection with
Onkel Col, that terrifying old gentleman who had roared at them from the
folds of so many wonderful wadded garments whenever they were led in,
trembling, to see him, for he had gout and was very terrible; and it
seemed particularly awful when one thought of Onkel Col going to heaven,
which was surely of all places the most _endimanche_.

"Of course," nodded Anna-Rose; but even she dropped her voice a little.
She peeped about among the bushes a moment, then put her mouth close to
Anna-Felicitas's ear, and whispered, "Stark."

They stared at one another for a space with awe and horror in their
eyes.

"You see," then went on Anna-Rose rather quickly, hurrying away from the
awful vision, "one knows one doesn't have clothes in heaven because they
don't have the moth there. It says so in the Bible. And you can't have
the moth without having anything for it to go into."

"Then they don't have to have naphthalin either," said Anna-Felicitas,
"and don't all have to smell horrid in the autumn when they take their
furs out."

"No. And thieves don't break in and steal either in heaven," continued
Anna-Rose, "and the reason why is that there _isn't_ anything to steal."

"There's angels," suggested Anna-Felicitas after a pause, for she didn't
like to think there was nothing really valuable in heaven.

"Oh, nobody ever steals _them_," said Anna-Rose.

Anna-Felicitas's slow thoughts revolved round this new uncomfortable
view of heaven. It seemed, if Anna-Rose were right, and she always was
right for she said so herself, that heaven couldn't be such a safe place
after all, nor such a kind place. Thieves could break in and steal if
they wanted to. She had a proper horror of thieves. She was sure the
night would certainly come when they would break into her father's
_Schloss_, or, as her English nurse called it, her dear Papa's slosh;
and she was worried that poor Onkel Col should be being snubbed up
there, and without anything to put on, which would make being snubbed so
much worse, for clothes did somehow comfort one.

She took her worries to the nursemaid, and choosing a moment when she
knew Anna-Rose wished to be unnoticed, it being her hour for
inconspicuously eating unripe apples at the bottom of the orchard, an
exercise Anna-Felicitas only didn't indulge in because she had learned
through affliction that her inside, fond and proud of it as she was, was
yet not of that