Part 10 (1/2)
And then the husband and wife laughed, a half-amused, half-sorrowful laugh.
After a moment Mr. Birge added:
”There _was_ a rather rough-looking boy there; strayed in from the storm, I presume. I meant to speak with him, but Mrs. Hastings annoyed me so much that it escaped my mind until he brushed past me and vanished.”
CHAPTER IX.
”TAKE IT AWAY!”
Tode rang the bell at Mr. Hastings', and waited in some anxiety as to whether he should get a glimpse of Miss Dora. He had some momentous questions to ask her. Fortune, or, in other words, Providence, favored him. While he waited for orders, Dora danced down the hall with a message.
”Tode, papa says you are to come in the dining-room and wait; he wants to send a note by you.”
”All right,” said Tode, following her into the brightly lighted room, and plunging at once into his subject.
”Look here, what did you mean the other night about hearts, and things?”
”About what?”
”Why, don't you know? Down there to the meeting.”
”Oh! Why I meant _that_; just what I said. That's the way they always talk at a prayer-meeting about Jesus, and loving him, and all that.”
”Was that a prayer-meeting where we was t'other night?”
”Why yes, of course. Tode, have you got the letters and figures all made?”
”Do you go every time?”
”What, to prayer-meeting? What a funny idea. No, of course not. It stormed, you know, and we had to go in somewhere. Wasn't it an awful night?”
”Who is Jesus, anyhow?”
”Why, he is G.o.d. Tode, how queer you act. Why don't you ask Mr. Birge, or somebody, if you want to know such things. Mamma says he is awful.”
”Awful!”
”Yes, awful good, you know. He's the minister down there at that chapel.
Wasn't it a funny looking church? Ours don't look a bit like that. Tode, where do you go to church?”
”My!” said Tode, with his old merry chuckle. ”That's a queer one. _I_ don't go to church nowhere; never did.”
”You ought to,” answered Miss Dora, with a sudden a.s.sumption of dignity.
”It isn't nice not to go to church and to Sunday-school. _I_ go. Pliny doesn't, because he has the headache so much. Shall I show you my card?”
And she produced from her pocket a dainty bit of pasteboard, and held it up.
”There, that's our verse. The whole school learn it for next Sunday.