“I believe he will be converted,” she managed to say, before her voice broke into a sob, “and I pray the Lord will show you the light, too, Mauney.”
He felt that perhaps it would have been good form to say “Thank you,” for he was sure her intentions were sterling, but he resented her reference to his mother, who seemed to him, in memory, a creature too much of sunshine and peace to be associated with anything so dolefully emotional.
He had never been a regular attendant at church. He remembered having sat beside his mother many times in the auditorium listening to unintelligible sermons and strenuous anthems. But from the day, five years ago, when as a chief mourner he had sat blankly stupefied, hearing comforting words that failed to comfort, and music whose poignant solemnity froze him with horrid fear, he had never been invited either by desire or family suggestion to return.
By the second week of the meetings David McBratney was reported to have been converted. He had stopped coming to see William as had been his custom. Neighbors said there could be no doubting the genuineness of his reformation for he had ceased chewing tobacco and was contemplating entry into the ministry of the Church. During supper at the Bard farm on Saturday evening a lull in the conversation was broken by a sarcastic laugh from William.
“Well, Dad, I guess they’ve got Dave,” he said. “Abe Lavanagh was tellin’ me to-day that Dave has went forward every night this here week. I never figured he’d get religion.”
Bard philosophically chewed on the idea as he peered at the lamp through his narrow eyes.
“There is just two kinds of people,” he asserted at length. “The fools and the damned fools. Now there’s a boy who’s got every chance of inheriting his old man’s farm. And I’m tellin’ you, Bill, it’s a purty good piece o’ land.”
“You bet.”
“Just about as good as is bein’ cultivated this side of Lockwood. There ain’t a stone left in the fields, but what’s piled up in the fences. William Henry has slaved this here thirty years—got the mortgage cleaned up—and that barn o’ his, Bill, why you couldn’t build it to-day for five thousand!”