Part 19 (1/2)
But, deary me! I do believe in my heart that's half the trouble, folks won't do it; his own folks, too, that have heard, and have got one of the mansions waiting for 'em. He's given them all work to do helping to fill the others, and half the time they let it go, and tend to their own work, and leave him to do the coaxing all alone.”
”Mother,” interrupted Winny, impatiently drumming on the corner of the Bible, ”I thought you said it was bedtime. I could have learned two grammar lessons in this time.”
The mother gave a gentle little sigh.
”Well, deary, so it is,” she said. ”We'll just have a word of prayer, and then we'll go.”
Tode in his little room took his favorite position, a seat on the side of the bed, and lost himself in thought. Great strides the boy had taken in knowledge since tea time. Wonderful truths had been revealed to him.
Some faint idea of the wickedness of this world began to dawn upon him.
All his life hitherto had been spent in the depths, and it would seem that if he were acquainted with anything it must be with wickedness, yet a new revelation of it had come to him. ”Ye _will_ not come unto me, that ye might have life.” He did not know that there was such a verse in the Bible; but now he knew the fact, and it gave this boy, who had come out of a cellar rum-hole, and had mingled during his entire life with just such people as swarm around cellar rum-holes, a more distinct idea of the total depravity of this world than he had ever dreamed of before. It gave him a solemn old feeling. He felt less like whistling and more like going very eagerly to work than he ever had before.
”There's work to do,” he said to himself. ”He's got a mansion ready for me it seems. I won't ever want other folk's nice homes any more as long as I live, 'cause it seems I've got a grander one after all than they can even think of; but then there's other mansions, and he wants people to come and fill them, and he let's us help.” Then his voice took a more joyful ring, like that of a strong brave boy ready for work. ”There's work to do, plenty of it, and I'll help--I'll help fill _some_ of them.”
”The poor homeless boy,” said the warm-hearted little mother down stairs. ”Deary me, my heart does just go out to him. And to think that he owns one of them mansions, and never knew it! Well, now, he shan't ever want for a home feeling on this earth if I can help it. I do believe he's one of the Lord's own, and we must feel honored, Winny dear, because we're called to help him. Don't you think he's a good warm-hearted boy, deary?”
”Oh yes,” Winny said, indifferently. ”But, mother, he does use such shocking grammar.”
[Ill.u.s.tration]
CHAPTER XIV.
SIGNS AND WONDERS.
Tode bustled into the house half an hour earlier than usual. Before him he carried a great sheet of pasteboard.
”Where's Winny?” he asked, sitting down on the nearest chair, out of breath with his haste. ”I've got an idea, and she must help me put it on here.”
”Winny's gone to the store, deary, for some tea. Whatever brought you home so early? Isn't business brisk to-day?”
”It was until it came on to rain, and I had to put things under cover, and then I had my idea, and I thought I'd run right home and tend to it.”
The door opened and Winny came in, tugging her big umbrella. Instinct, it could not have been education, prompted Tode to take the dripping thing from her and put it away.
”What on earth is that?” Winny said, pausing in the act of taking off her things to examine the pasteboard.
”That's my sign--leastways it will be when your wits and my wits are put together to make it. I got some colored chalk round the corner at the painters, and he showed me how to use 'em.”
”Tode, you said you would remember not to use ''em' and 'leastways' any more.”
”So I will one of these days. I keep remembering all the time. Say, won't that make a elegant sign? I never thought of a sign in my life till Pliny Hastings he came along to-day. Did you ever see Pliny Hastings?”
”No. Tode, I _do wish_ you would begin to study grammar this very evening. You're enough to kill any body the way you talk.”
”Oh bother the grammar, I'm telling you about Pliny Hastings. He came along, and says he, 'Halloo, Tode, here you are as large as life in business for yourself. You ought to have a sign,' says he. 'What's your establishment called?' And you may think I felt cheap as long as I lived at the Euclid house, to have no kind of a name for my place. I thought then I'd have a name and a sign before this time to-morrow. So when I went for my dinner I bought this pasteboard, and I been studying the thing out all this afternoon between the spells of arithmetic, and I've got it all fixed now, and I've got another idea come of that I never see how one thing starts another. There's going to come a piece of pasteboard off this end, 'cause you see it's too long, and I'm going to have a circle out of that.”
”A circle. What for?”
”Oh you'll see when we get to it. But now don't you want to know what my sign is?”