"You see, Mr. Blake, Jane's got a little sumpin to do now, and we can git bread enough, thank the Lord, but as fer coal, that's the hardest of all. We has to buy it by the bucketful, and that's mighty high at fifteen cents a bucket. An' pears like we couldn't never git nothin' ahead on account of my roomatiz. Where de coal's to come from dis ere winter I don't know, cep de good Lord sends it down out of the sky; and I reckon stone-coal don't never come dat dar road."
After some more talk, Mr. Blake went in to see Peter Sitles, the blind broom-maker.
"I hyeard yer stick, preacher Blake," said Sitles. "That air stick o' yourn's better'n a whole rigimint of doctors fer the blues. An' I've been a-havin' on the blues powerful bad, Mr. Blake, these yer last few days. I remembered what you was a-saying the last time you was here, about trustin' of the good Lord. But I've had a purty consid'able heartache under my jacket fer all that. Now, there's that Ben of mine," and here Sitles pointed to a restless little fellow of nine years old, whose pants had been patched and pieced until they had more colors than Joseph's coat. He was barefoot, ragged, and looked hungry, as some poor children always do. Their minds seem hungrier than their bodies. He was rocking a baby in an old cradle. "There's Ben," continued the blind man, "he's as peart a boy as you ever see, preacher Blake, ef I do say it as hadn't orter say it. Bennie hain't got no clothes. I can't beg. But Ben orter be in school." Here Peter Sitles choked a little.
"How's broom-making Peter?" said the minister.
"Well, you see, it's the machines as is a-spoiling us. The machines makes brooms cheap, and what can a blind feller like me do agin the machines with nothing but my fingers? 'Tain't no sort o' use to butt my head agin the machines, when I ain't got no eyes nother. It's like a goat trying it on a locomotive. Ef I could only eddicate Peter and the other two, I'd be satisfied. You see, I never had no book-larnin' myself, and I can't talk proper no more'n a cow can climb a tree."
"But, Mr. Sitles, how much would a broom-machine cost you?" asked the minister.
"More'n it's any use to think on. It'll cost seventy dollars, and if it cost seventy cents 'twould be jest exactly seventy cents more'n I could afford to pay. For the money my ole woman gits fer washin' don't go noways at all towards feedin' the four children, let alone buying me a machine."
The minister looked at his cane, but it did not answer him. Something must be done. The minister was sure of that. Perhaps the walking-stick was, too. But what?
That was the question.
The minister told Sitles good-by, and started to make other visits. And on the way the cane kept crying out, "Something must be done—something must be done—something MUST be done," making the must ring out sharper every time. When Mr. Blake and the walking-stick got to the market-house, just as they turned off from Milk Street into the busier Main Street, the cane changed its tune and begun to say, "But what—but what—but what—but WHAT," until it said it so sharply that the minister's head ached, and he put Old Ebony under his arm, so that it couldn't talk any more. It was a way he had of hushing it up when he wanted to think.