Part 20 (1/2)

So he put a clean white cloth on the dry-goods box in honor of this new bright day, arranged everything in the most tempting manner possible, and waited for customers. They came thick and fast. The Sabbath proved fair to be as busy a day at the dry-goods box as it used to be at the Euclid House. One disappointment Tode had. When he trudged down to the little house to have his great empty coffee-pot replenished, it was closed and locked.

”Course,” he said, nodding approvingly, ”they've gone to church. I might a known they wouldn't wash and iron and go to school Sunday. I ought to remembered and took away my coffee. Well, never mind, I'll just run around to the Coffee House and get my dish filled, and that will make it all right.”

So many customers came just at tea time that he found it impossible to go home to tea, but took a cup of his own coffee and a few of his cakes, and chuckled meantime over the fact that he was the only individual who could take his supper from that dry-goods box without paying for it.

It was just as the bells were ringing for evening service that he joyfully packed his nearly emptied dishes into the basket, shook the crumbs from his little table-cloth, folded it carefully, and rejoiced over the thought that he had done an excellent day's work, and could afford to go to church. The brown house was closed again, so he left his basket under a woodpile in the alley-way, and made all possible speed for Mr. Birge's church. Even then the opening services were nearly concluded, but he was in time for the Bible text, and that text Tode never forgot in his life. The words were, ”Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.”

I can not describe to you the poor boy's bewildered astonishment as he listened and thought, and gradually began to take in something of the true meaning of those earnest words. Mr. Birge was very decided in his opinions, very plain in his utterances. Milk wagons, ice wagons, meat wagons, and the whole long catalogue of Sabbath-breaking wagons, to say nothing of row-boats and steamboats, and trains of cars, were dwelt upon with unsparing tongue--nay, he went farther than that, and expressed his unmistakable opinion of Sabbath-breaking ice-cream saloons and coffee saloons; then down to the little apple children, and candy children, and shoestring children, who haunt the Sabbath streets. Tode listened, and ran his fingers through his hair in perplexity.

”It must come in _somewhere_,” he said to himself in some bewilderment.

”I don't quite keep a coffee house, and I don't--why, yes I do, sell apples every now and then; and as to that, I suppose I keep a coffee _box_. What if it ain't a house? I wonder now if it ain't right? I wonder if there's lots of things that look right before you think about them, that ain't right after you've turned 'em over a spell? And I wonder how a fellow is going to know?”

Then he gave his undivided attention to the sermon again; and went home after the service was concluded, with a very thoughtful face. Jim was there making a visit, but Tode only nodded to him, and went abruptly to the little shelf behind the stove in the corner, and took down the old Bible.

”Grandma, where are the commandments put?” he asked eagerly, addressing the old lady by the t.i.tle which he had bestowed on her very early in their acquaintance.

”Why they're in Exodus, in the twentieth chapter.”

”And where's Exodus?”

”Ho!” said Jim. ”You know a heap, Tode, don't you?”

Tode turned on him a grave anxious face.

”Do you know about them? Well, just you come and find them for me, that's a good fellow. I'm in a powerful hurry.”

Thus appealed to, Jim, nothing loth to display his wisdom, sauntered toward the table, and speedily found and patronizingly pointed out the commandments. Tode read eagerly until he came to those words, ”Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” Then he read slowly and carefully, ”Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy G.o.d: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates.”

Three times did Tode's astonished eyes go over this commandment in all its length and breadth; then he looked up and spoke with deliberate emphasis,

”This beats all creation! And the strangest part of it is that you didn't tell me anything about it, grandma.”

”Whatever is the boy talking about?” said grandma, wheeling her rocker around to get a full view of his excited face; and then Tode gave a synopsis of the evening sermon, and the history of his amazement, culminating with this first reading of the fourth commandment.

”And so you've been at your business all day!” exclaimed the astonished old lady. ”Why, for the land's sake, I thought you had gone off to some meeting away at the other end of the city.”

”I never once knew the first thing about this in the Bible. How was I going to know it was a mean thing to do?” questioned Tode, with increasing excitement. ”And it was the best day I've had, too, and that makes it all the meaner.”

And his voice choked a little, and his head went suddenly down on his arm.

”Well, now, I wouldn't mind, deary,” spoke the old lady in soothing tones, after a few moments of silence. ”If you didn't know anything about it, of course you wasn't to blame. 'Tisn't as if you had learned it in Sunday-school, and all that, and I wouldn't mind about the business. Like enough you'll have more days just as brisk as Sunday.”

”It isn't that,” Tode answered, disconsolately, lifting his head. ”It's all them Sundays that I've been and wasted, when I might have gone to meeting. Been righter to go than to stay away, it seems; and it's thinking about lots of other things that's wrong maybe, just like this, and a fellow not knowing it.”

And as he spoke he listlessly turned over the leaves of the old Bible, until his eye was arrested by the words, ”Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel.”

”That's exactly it,” he told himself. ”I've got to have a Bible. I'll get one little enough to go into my jacket pocket, and then, says I, we'll see if I can't find out about things. And after this I'm to shut up box and go to church, am I? Well, that's one good thing, anyhow.”

Presently he and Jim climbed up to the little room over the kitchen. No sooner were they alone than Tode commenced on a subject that had puzzled him.