Prudence of the Parsonage

by Ethel Hueston

"Haven't you seen the morning paper? You're Mr. Starr, the Methodist minister at Mount Mark, aren't you?"

"I am! But what has happened to my girls? Is anything wrong? Give me the paper!"

Mr. Starr was greatly agitated. He showed it.

But the clerk could not lose this opportunity to create a sensation. It was a chance of a life-time. "Why, a burglar got in the parsonage last night," he began, almost licking his lips with satisfaction. "The twins heard him at their dresser, and when he stepped into the closet they locked him in there, and yelled for the rest of the family. But he broke away from them, and went, down-stairs and climbed down into the dungeon to get the money. Then Prudence, she ran down-stairs alone in the dark, and locked him in the dungeon,—pushed him down-stairs or something like that, I believe,—and then telephoned for the police. And she stayed on guard outside the dungeon until the police got there, so he couldn't get away. And the police got him, and found it was Limber-Limb Grant, a famous gentleman thief, and your girls are going to get five hundred dollars reward for catching him."

Five minutes later, Mr. Starr and his suit-case were in a taxicab speeding toward Union Station, and within eight minutes he was en route for Mount Mark,—white in the face, shaky in the knees, but tremendously proud in spirit.

Arriving at Mount Mark, he was instantly surrounded by an exclamatory crowd of station loungers. "Ride, sir? Glad to take you home for nothing," urged Harvey Reel. Mount Mark was enjoying more notoriety than ever before in the two hundred years of its existence. The name of Prudence was upon every tongue, and her father heard it with satisfaction. In the parsonage he found at least two-thirds of the Ladies' Aid Society, the trustees and the Sunday-school superintendent, along with a miscellaneous assortment of ordinary members, mixed up with Presbyterians, Baptists and a few unclassified outsiders. And Prudence was the center of attraction.

She was telling the "whole story," for perhaps the fifteenth time that morning, but she broke off when her father hurried in and flung her arms about him. "Oh, papa," she cried, "they mustn't praise me. I had no idea there was a burglar in the house when I ran down the stairs, and if I hadn't been careless and left the dungeon unlocked the money would have been in no danger, and if the twins hadn't wakened me I wouldn't have known there was a burglar about the place, and if Fairy hadn't kept me from rushing out to the dungeon to see if the money was safe, he would have got away, and—it took the policemen to get him out. Oh, I know that is not very grammatical, father, but it's just as true as if it were! And I honestly can't see that much credit is due me."

But Mount Mark did not take it so calmly. And as for the Methodist church,—well, the Presbyterian people used to say there was "no living with those Methodists, since the girls caught a burglar in the parsonage." Of course, it was important, from the Methodist point of view. Pictures of the parsonage and the church were in all the papers for miles around, and at their very next meeting the trustees decided to get the piano the Sunday-school had been needing for the last hundred years!

When the five hundred dollars arrived from Chicago, Prudence felt that personally she had no real right to the money. "We must divide it," she insisted, "for I didn't earn it a bit more than any of the others. But it is perfectly glorious to have five hundred dollars, isn't it? Did you ever have five hundred dollars before? Just take it, father, and use it for whatever we need. It's family money."

But he would not hear of this. "No," he said, "put it in the bank, Prudence, for there will come a time when you will want money very badly. Then you will have it."