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A Day Out

“I like it now that it isn’t foggy! I could see birds.”

My sister’s tiny boots were still too much for her to manage by herself, and so at the end of the day we sat at the foot of the stairs while I unlaced them far enough for her to take off. It was our usual arrangement. Her pride as an independent young woman would have been badly wounded had I questioned it, so I did not.

“How do birds fly?” she asked.

“Well,” I said, with a sportive frown, “it’s because birds are God’s favourites. That’s what I heard.”

“How do you mean?”

“God likes them best because they aren’t disobedient, so he lifts them up into the sky. People can be naughty, but sometimes they aren’t, so they get to walk. And slugs and snakes are so bad, they have to crawl.”

She frowned intently for a moment.

“So,” she said, “that bird that flew into your bedroom window that time – was that God’s favourite too?”

By this time, her boots were unfastened all the way, and fortunately she forgot her train of thought and ran off into the kitchen.

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