“I oiled some of them while she was up street yesterday,” the girl reassured him. They were conspiring, as a Hallowe’en prank, to detach as many shutters as possible from Keturah Smiley’s tightly shuttered house; and particularly, the shutters were to be got off the windows of the sacred, sealed front parlour. In the three years or more that Mermaid had been living with Cap’n Smiley’s sister these shutters had been unfastened but twice a year: for a few hours in spring and a few hours in fall at the time of Keturah Smiley’s semi-annual housecleaning. For six months, from spring to fall, and again for six months, from fall to spring, the front parlour and most of the other rooms of the house lay in darkness. It seemed impossible that anything, even dust, could enter there, but dust there always was when cleaning time came. At which Mermaid used to wonder greatly, and Keturah Smiley to rage. “Where do you suppose it comes from?” the girl would ask Miss Smiley. “I don’t know where it comes from, but I know where it’s going to,” Keturah replied, with such a savage accent as to make her remark almost profane. “Hell?” inquired Mermaid. Miss Smiley straightened up and looked at her sternly. “I was only asking a question,” explained Mermaid. “I wouldn’t think of saying ‘hell’ except to ask a question. But any one who says ‘hell’ is asking a big question, isn’t he, Miss Smiley?” The funny child, as some folks in Blue Port called her, was not expressing her doubt for the first time. She had first shocked a Sunday School teacher with it. The Sunday School teacher had spoken to Keturah Smiley but had regretted it immediately, for Keturah had said: “Well, what’s the matter? Can’t you convince her there’s a hell? That’s _your_ job! Why put it on me?” So now when Mermaid put the general inquiry as to whether any one saying “hell” were not asking a big question, Keturah merely gazed at her darkly and replied: “Most likely he’s answering one about himself.” This tickled Mermaid. She renewed an old controversy concerning the front parlour. “What’s the use of singing, as we do at Sunday School, ‘Let a Little Sunshine In,’ if the shutters are always fastened?” she demanded. “How can you expect me to stand up and sing, ‘There’s Sunshine in My Heart To-day,’ Miss Smiley, when there’s not even sunshine in the house?” Keturah snorted. “My heart is not as big as my house,” she answered. “Sunshine in some people’s hearts, like sunshine in some people’s houses, would show up a good deal that would better be hidden.”