Magnus laughed too, with great delight.
"Sure enough," he said, "how do I? Maybe I go through the motions."
And now it was Mrs. Kindred who, after a moment's pause, changed the subject.
"Look, dear," she said, laying her hand on the open Bible, "I was reading just here: the parable of the sower. And my thoughts had been going back and forth from the seed which the fowls of the air were let pick up, to that other which fell in an honest and good heart, and 'with patience,' brought forth an hundred-fold."
Magnus ran his eyes over the passage.
"There are lots of fowls of the air at the Academy," he said.
"Maybe no more than elsewhere. But they have no business in your life, Magnus."
"No, mammy, they haven't," he said, hesitating a little with the difficulty of making his case plain. "All the same, they come in. I'll go to a right down good prayer-meeting Sunday night, and come back meaning to be the joy of your heart from that time on. Think I'll go straight to bed, so as to be sure and keep good till morning. Well, the moon is coming up as I get back to camp, and there is Randolph with pink and white gowns in tow; and I stop to speak, and they all say: 'Oh, come for a little walk!' I don't want to, and I half turn away—and then I go. The prayer-meeting isn't all gone by the time I get back, but there has been more of it picked up than you'd like."
"Yes," the mother answered, thinking in her heart that she had not prayed half enough for her boy in his hard places.