re most hopeless, who had once most hope,
And most beliefless, who had most believed.

--_The City of Dreadful Night._

All this time not a word about Black Sheep. He came later, and Harry,
the black-haired boy, was mainly responsible for his coming.
Judy--who could help loving little Judy?--passed, by special permit,
into the kitchen and thence straight to Aunty Rosa's heart. Harry was
Aunty Rosa's one child, and Punch was the extra boy about the house.
There was no special place for him or his little affairs, and he was
forbidden to sprawl on sofas and explain his ideas about the
manufacture of this world and his hopes for his future. Sprawling was
lazy and wore out sofas, and little boys were not expected to talk.
They were talked to, and the talking to was intended for the benefit
of their morals. As the unquestioned despot of the house at Bombay,
Punch could not quite understand how he came to be of no account in
this new life.

Harry might reach across the table and take what he wanted; Judy might
point and get what she wanted. Punch was forbidden to do either. The
gray man was his great hope and stand-by for many months after Mamma
and Papa left, and he had forgotten to tell Judy to "bemember Mamma."

This lapse was excusable, because in the interval he had been
introduced by Aunty Rosa to two very impressive things--an abstraction
called God, the intimate friend and ally of Aunty Rosa, generally
believed to live behind the kitchen-range because it was hot
there--and a dirty brown book filled with unintelligible dots and
marks. Punch was always anxious to oblige everybody. He, therefore,
welded the story of the Creation on to what he could recollect of his
Indian fairy tales, and scandalized Aunty Rosa by repeating the result
to Judy. It was a sin, a grievous sin, and Punch was talked to for a
quarter of an hour. He could not understand where the iniquity came
in, but was careful not to repeat the offence, because Aunty Rosa told
him that God had heard every word he had said and was very angry. If
this were true why did n't God come and say so, thought Punch, and
dismissed the matter from his mind. Afterward he learned to know the
Lord as the only thing in the world more awful than Aunty Rosa--as a
Creature that stood in the background and counted the strokes of the
cane.

But the reading was, just then, a much more serious matter than any
creed. Aunty Rosa sat him upon a tab