"You've done this," he said.
"No, sir," demurely bobbing. "He came."
"Show him in."
Ernie entered, shining and unshorn, a tatterdemalion with the face of a saint.
The old schoolmaster thought how like his father he was growing: the same untidy garden of flesh, the same spirit at work behind the weeds.
"Well," he said, laying down his paper, "I don't see much of you at chapel these days."
Ernie smiled.
"I'm in chapel all the time, sir," he said. "That's what I come about. I wanted you to know." He sat down suddenly. "You know what you used to tell me about prayer when I was a nipper. Ask, and it shall be given you, and that." He leaned forward. "That's true—every word of it. You can have what you want for the askin—if you'll wait. Now I want something; and I shall get it in time, because I'll be faithful."
Mr. Pigott looked into the rapt eager eyes of the scare-crow opposite him.
For some reason he felt humiliated, even afraid; and, man-like, he concealed his qualms behind an added gruffness.