“Watts’s hymn again!  I told you so!” exclaimed No. 3.  “But the story’s all nonsense from beginning to end.  Nobody can conjure, or talk to evil spirits in reality, so the whole thing is impossible; and where you find the moral, I don’t know.”

No. 3 leant back and yawned as he concluded.

He was rather disappointed that nothing more entertaining had come out of the story of Dr. Faustus.

But Aunt Judy had by no means done.

“Impossible about conjuring and actually talking to evil spirits, certainly,” said she; “but spiritual influences, both bad and good, come to us all, No. 3, without bodily communion; so for those who are inclined to feel like Dr. Faustus, there is both a moral and a warning in his fate.”

“I don’t know what about,” cried No. 3.  “I think he was uncommonly stupid, after all he had learnt, to get into such a mess.  Why, you yourself are always trying to make out that the more people labour and learn, the more sure they are to keep out of mischief.  Now then, how do you account for the story of your friend Dr. Faustus?”

“Because, like King Solomon, he did not labour and learn in a right spirit, or to a right end,” replied Aunt Judy.  “Lord Bacon remarks that when, after the Creation, God ’looked upon everything He had made, behold it was very good;’ whereas when man ‘turned him about,’ and took a view of the world and his own labours in it, he found that ‘all’ was ‘vanity and vexation of spirit.’  Why did he come to such a different conclusion, do you think?”

“I suppose because the world had got bad, before King Solomon’s time,” suggested No. 3.

“Its inhabitants had,” replied Aunt Judy.  “They had become subject to sin and misery; but the world was still God’s creation, and proofs of the ‘very good’ which He had pronounced over it were to be found in every direction, and even in fallen man, if Solomon had had the sense, or rather I should say, good feeling to look for them.  Ah!  No. 3, there was plenty to be learnt and done that would not have ended in ‘vanity and vexation of spirit’ if Solomon had learnt in order to trace out the glory of God, instead of establishing his own; and if he had worked to create, as far as was in his power, a world of happiness for other people, instead of seeking nothing but his own amusement.  If he had worked in the spirit of God, in short.”

“But who can?—­Nobody,” exclaimed No. 3.

“Yes, everybody, who tries, can, to a certain extent,” said Aunt Judy.  “It only wants the right feeling; some of the good God-like feeling which originated the creation of a beautiful world, and caused the contemplation of it to produce the sublime complacency which is described, ’And God looked upon everything that He had made, and behold it was very good.’”

“It’s a sermon, Judy,” cried No. 3, half bored, yet half amused at the notion of her preaching; “I’ll set up a pulpit for you at once, shall I?”