Gertrude Ingraham was looking at the young man with almost devout attention.
“No,” she answered, shaking her head with pretty humility, seeing which way he led.
“Then why,” pursued Keith Burgess, leaning over to look steadily in her face with his earnest eyes, and lowering his voice to a deeper emphasis, “why do you wonder that now and then a man should be willing to do for the Lord Jesus Christ and the salvation of souls what a hundred men do as a matter of course for their own selfish ambition and the gaining of money?”
The girl looked down, the brightness of her face softened by serious feeling.
“The only wonder, Miss Ingraham, is that so few do it. For my own part I do not see how a fellow who goes into the ministry, as things are now, can do anything else,” and Keith turned back to his neglected breakfast. Thereafter he was drawn into conversation, across the mute languor of the little Hindu, with his host, who had questions to ask regarding Fulham, which had been his college.
At four o’clock that afternoon, Keith Burgess, sitting in a large congregation in Dr. Harvey’s stately church, listening with consciously declining interest to a long statistical report which was being read from the pulpit, felt himself touched on the shoulder. Looking up he saw the Rev. Frank Nichols, pastor of a mission church in the city. He had known him well in college, a clear-eyed, well set-up young cleric. Nichols invited him by a word and look to follow him, and together they quietly left the assembly.
When they had reached the street and the crisp autumn air, Keith shook himself with a motion of relief.
“Is there anything more tiresome than such a succession of meetings?” he exclaimed. “Shall we walk? I am in a hurry to climb one of these hills.”
“We must do it later,” returned Nichols; “but if you are not too tired I want to take you down this street and on a block or two to my church. The women are having a meeting there this afternoon.”
“Oh, yes, I remember; but will it be in order for us to intrude?”