“Good-bye,” the boy answered, and Miss Percy took his hand and led him away.
Miss Susan finished cutting her cookies, placed them in the pan, pushed the pan in the oven, and slammed the oven door before she turned to Harvey.
“And I don't want any interference with the way I mean to raise him,” she said. “If so be you ever get me paid back you'll have him again. But not until then. And all I can say is I'll do by him as if he was my own child. So that settles that! And now, Harvey, what do you mean to do with yourself if you don't mean to do business?”
Harvey cleared his throat.
“I ain't come to this decision sudden, Susan,” he said defensively. “I've thought it over a lot. I've read a lot on it an' studied it over, an' I feel it is what I was meant for. There ain't any reason why there should n't be one now, any more than in old times if only somebody was inclined that way an' took to it serious enough. I've studied how all of them did, an' what they did—”
“For the land's sake!” exclaimed Miss Susan, “whatever is it you mean to be?”
“Well,” said Harvey, folding his fat hands across his stomach, “I've been studyin' up about saints in a 'Lives of the Saints' book, Susan, an' if I can have a fair show at it I'm goin' to be a saint, a regular saint, Susan, like them they had in the old times.”
“Great land of goodness!” Miss Susan cried, and she looked at Harvey with amazement, but it was evident he meant it.