"Eh?" I hastily took it out and looked at it.
"By George, so it is, Katie!" I cried, "I thought they were dead long since." It was white at first but it changed to blue, then red, then green, then purple. Unfortunately, I bit it unthinkingly, and I never discovered its complete spectrum.
I call this a lucky day; ice cream and changing balls in one afternoon are the quintessence of luck. But man is insatiable; to-night I have a great craving for a stick of twisted sugarelly—the polite call it liquorice.
* * *
A couple of Revivalists came to the village a week ago, and they have made a few converts. One of them stopped me on the road to-night and asked if I were saved.
"I am, or, at least, was, a journalist," I said, and walked on chuckling. Of course he gaped, for he did not know why I chuckled. I was thinking of the reporter sitting in the back seat at a Salvationist Meeting. A Salvation lass bent over him. "Are you saved, my friend?" she whispered. He looked up in alarm.
"I'm a journalist," he said hastily.
"O! I beg your pardon," she said, and moved on.
I don't like Revivalism. A couple of preachers came to our village when I was a lad, and for a month I thought of nothing but hell. "Only believe!" one of them used to say when he met you on the road; the other one had a shorter salutation: "Glory!" he shouted at you fiercely. Incidentally, the village was a hotbed of petty strife when they departed. And the young women who had stood up to give their "Testimony" were back to the glad-eye phase again within three weeks.
Lizzie Jane Gunn was a typical convert. Lizzie Jane used to describe the night of her testimony-giving thus:—"Mind you, Aw was gaein' alang the road, and Aw had just been gieing ma testimony, and it was gye dark and Aw was by ma leensome. Weel, a' at eence something fell into ma hand, and Aw thocht that it was a message frae the Loard; so Aw just grippit ma hand ticht, an' Aw didna look to see fat it wuz. Fan Aw got hame Aw lookit to see fat wuz in ma hand, an' d'ye ken fat it wus?... a button aff ma jaicket!"