“Don’t you bother yourself any further about him. I’ll do all I can. This is an upper-classman’s work, and it needs, too, some fine work by the professors. It wouldn’t take much to drive Tucker off. By the way, don’t mention to him about your conversation with me. I’m sure he’s got the stuff in him for a preacher. He needs practical encouragement and he shall have it. You just watch!”
Two days later, while I was in the gymnasium, practising alone with the basket-ball, Tucker appeared on the floor in his gymnasium clothes, and, apparently, in a very happy frame of mind. As he stood opposite to me and caught the ball as I threw it to him, he said,
“Priddy, I’m going to preach on Sunday; another chance to botch it.”
“Good for you,” I declared. “Where are you to preach?”
“For Burner,” Tucker explained; “he wants a Sunday off. Do you know whether he preaches from manuscript or not, Priddy?”
“I think that he does read—I know he does. I recollect to have heard him declare that it was only by reading that one could get logical sequence: his pet hobby.”
Tucker held the ball in the air for a second and sighed, audibly. “That makes it somewhat easier for me, Priddy. You see, even if I ramble on with notes, so long as I don’t read my sermon word for word, the congregation will give me credit for it, and I may have a chance. Anyway, I mean to keep on, even if I am rebuffed again.”
The following Sunday morning, while Burner was shaving, he said to me,
“I hope that Tucker has a sermon with some logic in it. Anyway, he will get back encouraged. Deacon Herring will see to that!” He turned his face from the glass and smiled at me through the lather.
“What do you mean?” I demanded.