“I am ready to begin all over again,” replied Emanuel, smiling.
His voice had the ring that his uncle knew too well; when he was a little fellow, and bound to do a thing whether or no, he spoke in that tone, and always with that engaging smile.
“Who pays for this phœnix?” asked the man of business brusquely. “I passed by your place. It is a fine heap of ashes. A curious sight I saw there, too. That sign you hang out—those four words.”
Bayard nodded.
“It is a pleasant accident. The department says it is almost unprecedented. Oh, we shall crawl up somehow, Uncle! I don’t feel very anxious. The town hall is already hired for temporary use. There is great excitement in the city over the whole affair. You see, it has reached the proportions, now, of a deadlock between the rum interest and the decent citizens. Our treasurer is circulating some sort of a paper. I think he hopes to collect a few hundreds—enough to tide us over till we can float off. I don’t know just how it is all coming out. Of course we can’t expect the help that an ordinary church would get in a similar trouble.”
“I’m glad if you recognize that fact, Manuel,” replied Mr. Worcester uncomfortably. In his heart he was saying, “The boy has his mother’s splendid Worcester pride. He’ll perish here, like a starving eagle on a deserted crag, but he won’t ask me!”
“You need a new building,” observed Mr. Worcester, with that quiet way of putting a startling thing which was another Worcester quality. “You seem to have made—from your own point of view, of course—what any man of affairs would call a success here. Of course, you understand, Manuel, that I cannot approve of your course. It has been the greatest grief of my life.”
Bayard hastened to observe that his comprehension of this point was not limited.
“From your point of view, not mine, Manuel, I should, as a man of business, suggest that a new building—your own property—something to impress business men, you know; something to give material form to that—undoubtedly sincere and—however mistaken—unselfish, religious effort that you have wasted in this freezing hole.... I wonder, Manuel, if you could put the draughts on that confounded box-burner with the angel atop? I don’t know when I’ve been so chilly!”
Bayard hastened to obey this request, without intimating that the draughts were closed to save the coal. This species of political economy was quite outside of his uncle’s experience, and yet, perhaps, the man of business had more imagination than his nephew gave him credit for; he said abruptly:—