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She and the mouse had happened, in short, upon an early edition of The Pilgrim’s Progress.

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If you had asked Laura what heaven was like, she would have answered, almost involuntarily—“‘A bald head,’” and Wilfred and James would have tumbled over each other in their anxiety to join in the chorus—“‘Because it is a bright and shining place where there is no parting,’” and to watch the effect upon you of that dazzling joke.

But after the twins came to live at Brackenhurst, Laura laid a taboo upon it. One might joke with Mother, but to joke about her, about anything connected with her, was sacrilege. Heaven, the twins were once and for all to understand, was not in the least like a bald head. It was in the Bible, a very beautiful place, a sort of hospital, and Mother was staying there just now to get well, and if Wilfred or James ever mentioned that riddle again, Laura would tell Jesus about it when she said her prayers, and Jesus would tell Mother, and Mother would not bring them one little bit of chocolate when she came back. (You see, she was learning already how to manage her men-folk.) The twins were impressed and obedient; yet the phrase, more illuminating than all Aunt Adela’s theology, stuck in their minds, and as no child attempts to imagine an abstraction, Laura’s bright and shining heaven lived on in hers as a pile of summer clouds lined with pink and silver, on which Mother lay as on a bed, with her beautiful long plaits disordered and her arm flung out weakly.