ternoons thinking how lonely it would be in Heaven with nobody there
but God and the angels and the Starr family. Even the family, it seemed,
was not to be admitted as an entity, but separately, according to
individual merit. Grandmother and Aunt Matilda had many a wordy battle
as to who would be there and who wouldn't, but both were sadly agreed
that Frank must stay outside.

[Sidenote: Rewards and Punishments]

Rosemary was deeply hurt when she discovered that Grandmother did not
expect to meet her son there, and as for her son's wife--the old lady
had dismissed the hapless bride to the Abode of the Lost with a single
comprehensive snort. Alternately, Rosemary had been rewarded for good
behaviour by the promise of Heaven and punished for small misdemeanours
by having the gates closed in her face. As she grew older and began to
think for herself, she wondered how Grandmother and Aunt Matilda had
obtained their celestial appointment as gate-keepers, and reflected that
it might possibly be very pleasant outside, with the father and mother
whom she had never seen.

So, of late years, religion had not disturbed Rosemary much. She paid no
attention to the pointed allusions to "heathen" and "infidels" that
assailed her ears from time to time, and ceased to feel her young flesh
creep when the Place of Torment was described with all the power of two
separate and vivid imaginations. Disobedience troubled her no longer
unless she was found out, and, gradually, she developed a complicated
system of deception.

When she was discovered reading a novel, she had accepted the
inevitable punishment with outward submission. Naturally, it was not
easy to tear out the leaves one by one, especially from a borrowed book,
and put them into the fire, saying, each time she put one in: "I will
never read another novel as long as I live," but she had compelled
herself to do it gracefully. Only her flaming cheeks had betrayed her
real feeling.

[Sidenote: Forbidden Reading]

A week later, when she was locked in her room for the entire day, on
account of some slight offence, she had wept so much over the sorrows of
Jane Eyre that even Aunt Matilda was affected when she brought up the
bread and milk for the captive's supper. Rosemary had hidden the book
under the mattress at the first sound of approaching footsteps, but Aunt
Matilda, by describing the tears of penitence to the stern authority
below, obtained permission for Rosemary to come d