“Let me see, I believe you take two lumps o’ sugar an’ no milk.” Mrs. Martin knew perfectly what her friend took. “I don’t know how this tea is. I got it from the new grocery over at the corner.” She tasted it deliberately. “It might ’a’ drawed a little more.” Slowly she stirred it round and round, and then, as if she had drawn the truth from the depths of her cup, she observed, “This is a queer world, Mis’ Smith.”
Mrs. Smith sighed a sigh that was appreciative and questioning at once. “It is indeed,” she echoed; “I’m always a-sayin’ to myself what a mighty cur’us world this is.”
“Have you ever got any tea from that new grocery-man?” asked her companion, with tantalising irrelevance.
“No: I hain’t never even been in there.”
“Well, this here’s middlin’ good; don’t you think so?”
“Oh, it’s more than middlin’, it’s downright good. I think I must go into that grocery some time, myself.”
“I was in there today, and met Mis’ Murphy: she says there’s great goin’-ons up at Miss Prime’s—I never shall be able to call her Mis’ Hodges.”
“You don’t tell me! She and Brother ’Liphalet ain’t had a fallin’ out already, have they? Though what more could you expect?”
“Oh, no, indeed. It ain’t no fallin’ out, nothin’ o’ the kind.”
“Well, what then? What has Miss Hester—I mean Mis’ Hodges been doin’ now? Where will that woman stop? What’s she done?”
“Well, you see—do have another cup of tea, an’ help yoreself to that bread an’ butter—you see, Freddie Brent has finished at the high school, an’ they’ve been wonderin’ what to make him.”
“Well, what air they a-goin’ to make him? His father was a good stonemason, when he was anything.”
“Humph! you don’t suppose Miss Hester’s been sendin’ a boy to school to learn Latin and Greek an’ algebry an’ sich, to be a stonemason, do you? Huh uh! Said I to myself, as soon as I see her sendin’ him from the common school to high school, says I, ‘She’s got big notions in her head.’ Oh, no; the father’s trade was not good enough fur her boy: so thinks Mis’ ’Liphalet Hodges.”
“Well, what on airth is she goin’ to make out of him, then?”
“Please pass me that sugar: thank you. You know Mr. Daniels offered him a place as clerk in the same store where Sophy Davis is. It was mighty kind o’ Mr. Daniels, I think, to offer him the job.”
“Well, didn’t he take it?”
“Well, partly he did an’ partly he didn’t, ef you can understand that.”
“Sally Martin, what do you mean? A body has to fairly pick a thing out o’ you.”
“I mean that she told Mr. Daniels he might work fur him half of every day.”
“Half a day! An’ what’s he goin’ to do the other half?”
“He’s a-goin’ to the Bible Seminary the other half-day. She’s a-goin’ to make a preacher out o’ him.”
Mrs. Martin had slowly and tortuously worked up to her climax, and she shot forth the last sentence with a jubilant ring. She had well calculated its effects. Sitting back in her chair, she supped her tea complacently as she contemplated her companion’s astonishment. Mrs. Smith had completely collapsed into her seat, folded her arms, and closed her eyes. “Laws a massy!” she exclaimed. “What next? Old Tom, drunken Tom, swearin’ an’ ravin’ Tom Brent’s boy a preacher!” Then suddenly she opened her eyes and sat up very erect and alert as she broke forth, “Sally Martin, what air you a-tellin’ me? It ain’t possible. It’s ag’in’ nature. A panther’s cub ain’t a-goin’ to be a lamb. It’s downright wicked, that’s what I say.”
“An’ so says I to Mis’ Murphy, them same identical words; says I, ‘Mis’ Murphy, it’s downright wicked. It’s a-shamin’ of the Lord’s holy callin’ o’ the ministry.’ ”
“An’ does the young scamp pertend to ’a’ had a call?”
“No, indeed: he was mighty opposed to it, and so was her husband; but that woman was so set she wouldn’t agree to nothin’ else. He don’t pertend to ’a’ heerd no call, ’ceptin’ Miss Hester’s, an’ that was a command. I know it’s all true, fur Mis’ Murphy, while she wasn’t jest a-listenin’, lives next door and heerd it all.”
And so the two women fell to discussing the question, as they had heard it, pro and con. It was all true, as these gossips had it, that Miss Hester had put into execution her half-expressed determination to make a preacher of Fred. He had heard nothing of it until the day when he rushed in elated over the kindly offer of a place in Mr. Daniels’s store. Then his guardian had firmly told him of her plan, and there was a scene.
“You kin jest tell Mr. Daniels that you kin work for him half a day every day, an’ that you’re a-goin’ to put in the rest of your time at the Bible Seminary. I’ve made all the arrangements.”
“But I don’t want to be a preacher,” the boy had retorted, with some heat. “I’d a good deal rather learn business, and some day start out for myself.”
“It ain’t what some of us wants to do in this life; it’s what the Lord appoints us to; an’ it’s wicked fur you to rebel.”
“I don’t know how you can know so much what the Lord means for me to do. I should think He would give His messages to those who are to do the work.”
“That’s right, Freddie Brent, sass me, sass me. That’s what I’ve struggled all the best days of my life to raise you fur.”
“I’m not sassing you, but—”
“Don’t you think, Hester,” broke in her husband, “that mebbe there’s some truth in what Freddie says? Don’t you think the Lord kind o’ whispers what He wants people to do in their own ears? Mebbe it wasn’t never intended fur Freddie to be a preacher: there’s other ways o’ doin’
