As they came to see more and more of each other the children’s intercourse assumed a definite character, which one often notices in childish friendships. Phil, as the elder and more original-minded of the two, assumed as it were command, led the conversation, and Carrie, deeply admiring his powers of mind, and quite content to be commanded, took all her ideas from him. Phil indeed was vastly entertaining to her after the pre-occupied silence of Patty, but sometimes his views rather startled her childish fancy. They had gone far afield one fine day in late autumn—even to the Park—a world of delight to the children, and Peter and Patty, having seated themselves under one of the trees, Phil and Carrie followed the example of their elders and sat down also. ‘I wish God would come,’ said Phil suddenly, gazing up through the branches above him. ‘Do you not, Carrie?’ ‘No—o,’ admitted the feeble-minded Carrie. ‘I do, and I shall tell you why. Peter took me to his meeting-house, where they pray without a book, and they prayed, “_Rend the heavens and come down_.” Well, since that I’ve lain down whenever I’ve got a chance and looked up into the sky. ’Tis too bright to look into nicely most days, but if God were to make a rent in that blue bit we see’ (he pointed up as he spoke, and Carrie glanced upwards, half expecting to see some Beatific Vision), ‘if He were to make a hole to come down through, you know, we should see something brighter than that behind, I believe. And then He’d come down—oh, like that!’ Phil brought his hands together with a crack that made Carrie jump. ‘I’d be frightened,’ she said, taking a reassuring peep at the placid blue that smiled above them. It showed no signs of cracking open, she thought. ‘Pooh,’ said Phil contemptuously. ‘I believe you had rather that the other God came—the Jesus God. He is quite different, and will not come the same way at all. I fancy He’d _walk_ into the town: coming the Richmond way perhaps, about the blossomy time of the year. We would just be walking along Piccadilly perhaps, and we’d see every one turning to look, and . . .’ Phil’s imagination gave out here; he had not given enough of thought to the subject to visualise it perfectly, so he returned to his former and more favourite imagining— ‘Now what pleases me about t’other God coming would be the noise—drums, and bugles. Don’t you love ’em, Carrie? I went with my father to the Horse Guards t’other day. Oh, you should have heard it! Well, God will have gold bugles of course—the ones I heard were just tin, I think—and the gold bugles and God’s drums together, they’d make a noise no one could get away from. Now what do you suppose every one we know would do? I wonder what my father would do? Peter would come running up the back stair to look after _me_—I’m sure of that—in case I was afraid. Not that I would be,’ he added hastily.