She nodded. “The poor old chap can’t stay away,” she explained. “He never should have sold out, I always think. When a man gets attached to a place it’s foolish to leave, at his age, anyway.”
William was chewing his food thoughtfully, with an expression of narrow-eyed meditation.
“Dave,” he ventured, at length. “I always thought your old man never forgave you for leavin’ home. Course, I never said a word to him, understand. It takes all kinds of people to make up the world, and I’m not sayin’ you didn’t do the right thing, neither. Maybe some people might say you was wrong, but I got enough to do without tendin’ to other people’s business.” William’s eye quickly took in McBratney’s business suit, while a look of curiosity came over his face. “Of course,” he said, in a tone that challenged explanation, “I always had an idea as you had gone into preachin’.”
“I studied at it awhile,” McBratney admitted, good-naturedly, “and then I suddenly quit it.”
“What made you quit it, Dave?” persisted William. “Was it costin’ too much?”
“No, it don’t cost too much, but I couldn’t see much head nor tail to it,” confessed McBratney. “I went on with it till they started talking about the Trinity, and—”
“Trinity, eh, Dave?”
“Yes, and a lot of other theories that don’t count. When they began splitting hairs about baptism and sacraments, I said to myself, ‘This isn’t pitching hay!’”
“That’s a fact, too, Dave,” nodded William, sagely.
“’Twasn’t what I was cut out for anyway,” said McBratney. “I couldn’t see how baptism nor sacraments, nor any such like, was going to save the world. I saw people every day in Merlton, who were so deep in sin that they were pretty near hopeless, and, although I don’t know much, I reckoned that these fine points of doctrine were all twaddle.”