“Not many,” she said. “How kin we?” she continued, more fiercely. “What chance d’ we hev? We ain’t knowed nothin’ but work all our lives. A man don’t stop t’ learn t’ read when he needs bread t’ eat.”
She paused to look darkly at her visitor. He was so moved with pity and distress that he could find no answer. Perhaps she read his thought in his eyes, for she grew more gentle.
“Thet’s one reason we-uns don’t come down t’ them meetin’s o’ yourn,” she went on. “By th’ time Sunday comes, we’re too tired t’ care fer anything but rest. And then,” she added defiantly, “most of us has got so we don’t care, noway.”
Mr. Bayliss went back to his study with his Bibles still under his arm. He felt that he was just beginning to understand the problem which confronted him, and he had sought vainly for a solution to it. Since the miners could not read, he had visited such of them as would permit him and had read to them, but they had received him for the most part with indifference. He had labored patiently, though sometimes despairingly. And now, of a sudden, after these years, he saw a glimmering of light. It was only a miner’s boy reading to his parents—a little thing, perhaps, yet even little things sometimes lead to great ones. And the minister determined to do all he could for that boy, that he might serve as a guide to others.
He found he could do much. He helped the boy over difficult places in his books, gave him a dictionary that he might find out for himself the meaning of the words, and taught him how to use it. Gradually, as he came to know him better, the project, which at first had been very vague, began to take shape in his mind. Why should not this boy become a helper to his own people? Who could understand them and minister to them as one who had sprung from among them? But of this he said nothing to any one, only pondered it more and more.
It was quite a different Tommy from the one she had known that Miss Andrews found awaiting her when she returned in September to open her school again. His eyes had a new light in them. It was as if a wide, dreary landscape had been suddenly touched and glorified by the sun. On his face, now, glowed the sunlight of intelligence and understanding—a light which deep acquaintance with the books Tommy had been reading will bring to any face. She had a talk with him the very first day.
“And you liked the books?” she asked.
His sparkling eyes gave answer.
“Which hero did you like the best?”