know what Mr. Carpenter wants—his one lost chance again. Katherine Morris wants her youth back—she hates us younger girls because we are young. Old Malcolm Strang just wants to live—just one more year—always just one more year—just to live—just not to die. It must be horrible to have nothing to live for except just to escape dying. Yet he believes in heaven—he thinks he will go there. If he could see my flash just once he wouldn’t hate the thought of dying so, poor old man. And Mary Strang wants to die—before something terrible she is afraid of tortures her to death. They say it’s cancer. There’s Mad Mr. Morrison up in the gallery—we all know what he wants—to find his Annie. Tom Sibley wants the moon, I think—and knows he can never get it—that’s why, people say he’s not all there. Amy Crabbe wants Max Terry to come back to her—nothing else matters to her.
“I must write all these things down in my Jimmy-book tomorrow. They are fascinating—but, after all, I like writing of beautiful things better. Only—these things have a tang beautiful things don’t have some way. Those woods out there—how wonderful they are in their silver and shadow. The moonlight is doing strange things to the tombstones—it makes even the ugly ones beautiful. But it’s terribly hot—it is smothering here—and those thunder-growls are coming nearer. I hope Ilse and I will get home before the storm breaks. Oh, Mr. Sampson, Mr. Sampson, God isn’t an angry God—you don’t know anything about Him if you say that—He’s sorrowful, I’m sure, when we’re foolish and wicked, but He doesn’t fly into tantrums. Your God and Ellen Green’s God are exactly alike. I'd like to get up and tell you so, but it isn’t a Murray tradition to sass back in church. You make God ugly—and He’s beautiful. I hate you for making God ugly, you fat little man.”
Whereupon Mr. Sampson, who had several times noted Emily’s intent, probing gaze, and thought he was pressing her tremendously with a sense of her unsaved
