“Say ‘thank you’ to your Uncle Joe, Oliver,” said Mr. Baxter huskily, and then, without rime or reason, gave vent to his nervous cackle.
“Thank you, Uncle Joe,” muttered Oliver.
Mr. Sage laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Do you say your prayers every night, Oliver?”
“Yes, sir—I do.”
“Well—er—if Brother Baxter doesn’t mind and if you gentlemen will excuse me, I think I will go upstairs with Oliver and—and listen to his prayer.”
A little later on, the tall, spare pastor sat on the side of young Oliver’s trundle bed in the room across the hall from old Oliver’s and next to the one in which Annie Sharp, the hired girl, was already sound asleep. The boy had murmured his “Now I lay me” and, for good measure, the Lord’s Prayer. Mr. Sage leaned over and, lowering his voice, said—but not until he had satisfied himself that no one was listening outside the door:
“You believe I am a good man, don’t you, Oliver—a very good man?”
“Yes, sir. You’re a preacher. You got to be good.”
“Ahem! Quite so. You don’t believe I could tell a lie, do you?”
“No, sir.”