"You'll get my likeness tu, I s'pose, same as the photograph man done it last winter to Penzance? Me an' Joe was took side by side, an' folks reckoned 'twas the moral of us, specially when the gen'leman painted Joe's hair black an' mine yeller for another shillin' cost." "It must have been very excellent." "Iss, 'twas for sartain." "What did Mr. Tregenza say of it?" "Well, faither, he'm contrary to sich things, as I tawld 'e, Mister Jan. Faither said Joe'd better by a deal keep his money in his purse; but he let me have the picksher, an' 'tis nailed up in a lil frame, what Joe made, at home in the parlor." She stopped a moment and sighed, then spoke again. "Faither's a wonnerful God-fearin' man, sure 'nough." "Is he a God-loving man too, Joan?" "I dunnaw. That ed'n 'sackly the same, I s'pose?" "As different as fear and love. I'm not an atom frightened of God myself--no more than I am of you." "Lard! Mister Jan." "Why should I be? You are not frightened of the air you breathe--yet that is part of God; you are not frightened of the gold gorse or the blue sky--yet they are part of God too. God made you--you are part of God--a deliberate manifestation of Him. What's the use of being frightened? You and I can only know God by the shapes He takes--by the bluebells and the ferns and the larks in the sky, and the rabbits and wild things." His effort to inspire the girl with Nature-worship, though crudely cast in a fashion most likely to attract her, yet failed just then, and failed ludicrously. Her mind comprehended barely enough to accept his idea in a sense suggested by her acquaintance with fable, and when he instanced a rabbit as an earthly manifestation of the Everlasting, she felt she could cap the example from her own store of knowledge. "I reckon I sees what you'm meanin', Mister Jan. Theer's things us calls witch-hares in these paarts up-long. The higher-quarter people have seed 'em 'fore now; nothin' but siller bullets will kill 'em. They goes loppettin' about down lawnly lanes on moonlight nights, an' they draws folks arter 'em. But if you could kill wan of 'em 'tis said as they'd turn into witches theer an' then. So you means that God A'-mighty' takes shaapes sometimes same as they witches do, doan't 'e?" "Not quite that, Joan. What I want you to know is that the great Being you call God is nearer to you here, on Gorse Point, than in the Luke Gospelers' meeting-house, and He takes greater delight in a bird's song than in all your father's prayers and sermons put together. That is because the great Being taught the bird to sing Himself, but He never taught your father to pray." "I dunnaw 'sackly what you means, Mister Jan, but I judges you ban't so religious like as what faither is."