“Young man, I thank you,” he said sonorously. “Has it ever occurred to you what a degrading thing it is that these frail bodies of ours cannot long exist without carnal food?”
Dick smiled.
“I can’t say it has,” he returned promptly. “I have a decided partiality to good things to eat, especially when I come in after a day’s tramp through the woods, with an appetite like a horse.”
“But what a shame it is that our soaring, ethereal spirits should be tied to earth by such carnal bonds,” persisted the preacher. “Were it not for the baleful necessity of food and drink what might not man accomplish!”
He rolled his eyes in ecstasy and then slowly lowered them to Merriwell’s face.
“A painful affliction which I have carried uncomplainingly from the cradle of childhood, compels occasional recourse to—er—stimulant,” he said blandly. “Periods of faintness, you know, from which nothing else seems to revive me. If, by any chance, you have something of the sort at hand——”
The pause was expressive. Dick glanced swiftly at the thin man’s hushed nose. It would seem that the periods of faintness had been more or less frequent.
“Sorry,” he said shortly, “but I haven’t.”
The Reverend Pennyfeather sighed and clasped his hands together resignedly.
“Ah, well, perhaps ’tis better so,” he murmured. “No doubt I shall get along without it. So far none of the attacks have been fatal. Perhaps you have no objection to my resting for a while before I resume my way.”