“Yes, I knew it was wrong,” admitted Davy uncomfortably, “but plum jam is awful nice, Anne.  I just peeped in and it looked so good I thought I’d take just a weeny taste.  I stuck my finger in . . .”  Anne groaned . . . “and licked it clean.  And it was so much gooder than I’d ever thought that I got a spoon and just sailed in.”

Anne gave him such a serious lecture on the sin of stealing plum jam that Davy became conscience stricken and promised with repentant kisses never to do it again.

“Anyhow, there’ll be plenty of jam in heaven, that’s one comfort,” he said complacently.

Anne nipped a smile in the bud.

“Perhaps there will . . . if we want it,” she said, “But what makes you think so?”

“Why, it’s in the catechism,” said Davy.

“Oh, no, there is nothing like that in the catechism, Davy.”

“But I tell you there is,” persisted Davy.  “It was in that question Marilla taught me last Sunday.  ‘Why should we love God?’ It says, ‘Because He makes preserves, and redeems us.’  Preserves is just a holy way of saying jam.”

“I must get a drink of water,” said Anne hastily.  When she came back it cost her some time and trouble to explain to Davy that a certain comma in the said catechism question made a great deal of difference in the meaning.

“Well, I thought it was too good to be true,” he said at last, with a sigh of disappointed conviction.  “And besides, I didn’t see when He’d find time to make jam if it’s one endless Sabbath day, as the hymn says.  I don’t believe I want to go to heaven.  Won’t there ever be any Saturdays in heaven, Anne?”

“Yes, Saturdays, and every other kind of beautiful days.  And every day in heaven will be more beautiful than the one before it, Davy,” assured Anne, who was rather glad that Marilla was not by to be shocked.  Marilla, it is needless to say, was bringing the twins up in the good old ways of theology and discouraged all fanciful speculations thereupon.  Davy and Dora were taught a hymn, a catechism question, and two Bible verses every Sunday.  Dora learned meekly and recited like a little machine, with perhaps as much understanding or interest as if she were one.  Davy, on the contrary, had a lively curiosity, and frequently asked questions which made Marilla tremble for his fate.

“Chester Sloane says we’ll do nothing all the time in heaven but walk around in white dresses and play on harps; and he says he hopes he won’t have to go till he’s an old man, ’cause maybe he’ll like it better then.  And he thinks it will be horrid to wear dresses and I think so too.  Why can’t men angels wear trousers, Anne?  Chester Sloane is interested in those things, ’cause they’re going to make a minister of him.  He’s got to be a minister ’cause his grandmother left the money to send him to college and he can’t have it unless he is a minister.  She thought a minister was such a ’spectable