Professor Drummond speaks of our whole life as a long-drawn breath of mystery, between the two great wonders--the first awakening and the last sleep. I often think of that as I listen to the little children talking to each other and to us. They are always wondering about something. One day it was, "Do fishes love Jesus?" followed by "What is a soul?" The conclusion was, "It's the thing we love Jesus with." When they first come to us they invariably think that mountains grow like trees: "Stones are young mountains, aren't they? and hills are middle-aged mountains." Later on, every printed thing on a wall is a text. We were in a railway station, on our way to the hills: "Look! oh, what numbers and numbers of texts! But what queer pictures to have on texts!" One was specially perplexing; it was a well-known advertisement, and the picture showed a monkey smoking a cigar. What could that depraved animal have to do with _a text_? When we got to the hills the first amazement was the sight of the fashionable ladies wearing veils. "Don't they like to look at God's beautiful world? Do they like it better _spotty_?" Tangles has another name; it is the "Ugly Duckling," and it is extremely descriptive; but Ugly Duckling or not, she is of an inquiring turn of mind, and one Saturday afternoon, after standing under a tree for fully five minutes lost in thought, she came to me with a question: "What are the birds saying to each other?" I looked at the Ugly Duckling, and she twisted herself into a note of interrogation, in the ridiculous way she has, but her face was full of anxiety for enlightenment about the language of the sparrows. "There," she said, pointing vigorously to the astonished birds, which instantly flew away, "that little sparrow and this one are making quite different noises. What are they saying? I do want to know so much!" As I imagined the birds in question had just been having supper, I told her what I thought they were probably saying. Next day, in the sermon, there was something about the praise all creation offers to God, and I saw Tangles knotting her hands together and going into the queerest contortions in appreciation of the one bit of the sermon she could understand. The Imp's questions were various. "What is that?"--pointing to a busy-bee clock--"is it an English kind of insect? Don't its legs get tired going round? Oh! is it dead now?" (when it stopped). "Who made Satan?" was an early one. "Why doesn't God kill him immediately, and stamp on him?" One day I was trying to find and touch her heart by telling her how very sorry Jesus is when we are naughty. She seemed subdued, then--"Amma, where was the Queen's spirit after she died and before they buried her, _and what did they give it to eat_?"