“So he says. What if it should come about! How strange it would seem for a cursing old sinner like me to preach and pray as that missionary does! They call me a hard man. But what can I do? Don’t I inform every soul that asks me for money that he’s a fool, and that I shall hold him to the writing? I get their lands, it is true; but if I did not, somebody else would. Why, they mortgage all they have, and then buy the highest priced goods in the store. I’ve no patience with such folks, and they don’t get much mercy from me.”
“But,” bluntly said Tom, “I can’t see how another’s wrong-doing justifies ours.”
“That’s so,” he returned, gloomily. “But I’ve a different sort of business to transact with you, than to defend my misdeeds. That missionary has been making me a pastoral visit, and he took it upon himself to inform me that the Lord has called you to preach the gospel, and that it is my duty to furnish money to send you off to college, or some such place, where they grind out ministers.”
“Me!” exclaimed Tom, rising to his feet.
“Yes, you; sit down, sit down, young man, and be calm;” and the grocer, in his own excitement, 293 gesticulated violently with both arms at once. “He says that I’m the only man here that has the money to do this. Pretty cool–isn’t it?–to dictate to old Cowles, the miserly money-grabber, in that way. I just turned on my heel, and left him in the middle of his ordering; but, you see, I couldn’t help thinking about it night and day. I wouldn’t wonder if that meddling missionary had been praying about it all the while; and the result is, the old money-lender is going to give you a lift, my boy. We, hackneyed, hopeless old reprobates, need just such preachers as the missionary’s famous seminary is going to make out of you; and I invited you here to say that you can depend on me for two hundred dollars in gold to start with, and as much more each year, till you graduate, as the missionary says you need. When old Cowles begins to do a thing, mind you, he never does it by halves.”
“But,” said Tom, choking with joy and wonder, “how shall I pay you?”
“Pay! pay!” roared the grocer, his eyes shooting flame; then, suddenly waxing tender, the tears extinguishing the fire-flashes, “if you will pray for a poor old rebel like me, it is all the pay I want.”
Then, going into the entry, he called,–
“Here, sir,” said a voice; and the dapper little tailor, who rented a window in the store, made his appearance.