She thought the word, Jesus, should be kept inside the church building like other words inside the bedroom. She was a good Christian woman with a large respect for religion, though she did not, of course, believe any of it was true.

With grown people, a road led either to heaven or hell, but with children there were always stops along the way where their attention could be turned with a trifle.

"She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."

She had never given much thought to the devil for she felt that religion was essentially for those people who didn't have the brains to avoid evil without it. For people like her, for people of gumption, it was a social occasion providing the opportunity to sing; but if she had ever given it much thought, she would have considered the devil the head of it and God the hanger-on.

The girl had taken the Ph.D. in philosophy and this left Mrs. Hopewell at a complete loss. You could say, "My daughter is a nurse," or "My daughter is a schoolteacher," or even "My daughter is a chemical engineer." You could not say, "My daughter is a philosopher." That had ended with the Greeks and Romans.