"Who shall restore the years that the locust hath eaten?" The words sounded like a knell in the ears of Ingeborg, as she drew the sheet over her aunt's face. Ragna would have laughed a bitter laugh, but Ingeborg wept. CHAPTER IX "Mammina," asked Mimmo, stirring his soup with thoughtful care, "can people do just what they like, when they are big?" Ragna was feeding Beppino out of a bowl of bread and milk. It was the usual luncheon hour, but Valentini had not yet come in, and the children chattered away, gaily. "No," said Ragna, "no one can do exactly what he likes." "But they can,--they does," insisted Mimmo. "Do, you should say, dear." "'Do,' then," corrected Mimmo, "they do. Babbo says 'accidenti' and bangs the door, but you punish us if we do,--why does no one punish him?" "Punish Babbo!" exclaimed Beppino agape. "Grown up people do many things that children aren't allowed to do,--but they don't always do what is right, and God punishes them," said Ragna. "Who ith God," asked Beppino. "I know," Mimmo hastened to show his superior knowledge,--"He is a big person sitting on a cloud in the sky, with a beard and a dove with shiny lines out of it,--I have never seen him really truly, but _Babbo_ has a picture of him." "Yeth," assented Beppino without interest. But Mimmo was not so assured as he wished to appear. "Mammina," he said, "does God come off his cloud to punish people?" "God is everywhere," said his mother. The child puckered his brows. "How can he be everywhere if he sits on a cloud in the sky? Is he here now, in this room?" "Yes, dear." "Then why can't I see Him?" "He is here like the air,--you can't see the air." "Is He in my soup?" he inquired eagerly, "does I eat Him in my spoon?" Ragna could not help smiling. Mimmo's questions often puzzled her as to how to answer them in a way suited to the child's understanding. This time, she hedged. "Eat your soup, darling; you are too little to understand yet. When you are older, Mammina will tell you." Mimmo addressed himself to his task, but he turned the question over in his childish mind, and when Valentini made his tardy appearance, greeted him with: "Babbo, Mammina says that I am eating up God in my soup, and that He will punish you,--but if I eat Him up, he won't be able to, will He?" "God will punish your mother for telling such wicked lies," growled Egidio, hitching his chair to the table.