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Susan had always pondered these things as she sat in the field at Beggars Bush, though her acquaintance with them was limited to what she heard read at meeting. The Bible world had always seemed very close and clear, a luminous world shining out upon the concrete trials and joys of this. She did not actually confound the two, as some children might have done. A slice of Brown George turnover was a solid earthly blessing for which she did not trouble even to thank God. But the folk in the Bible were there—close at hand—not away in the past or beyond a gulf, and she felt that she might any day meet one of them: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, or Moses with his ten commandments and his burning bush, or Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. . . .

Her schooling enriched the circle of acquaintances and possibilities. Besides Abraham, she met Nimrod the hunter, Melchisedeck the priest; besides Moses she met Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, whom the earth swallowed with her mouth. . . . Suppose the earth should open her mouth again. . . . In the New Testament, too, besides the Saviour and His apostles, were great men of renown—Stephen with his face like an angel, and Saul breathing threatenings and slaughter, and all the white lightning of the Apocalypse, burning strange pictures into her heart.