"Yes I am," retorted the other. "It's enough to excite anyone who has a heart to feel and eyes to see the misery in this old world, and then to be asked eternally, 'Why don't you go to church?' Why look at 'em; they even let their own preachers starve when they get too old to work. Societies and lodges don't do that. I don't mean to step on your toes though," he added hastily. "You know that, Uncle Bobbie. You've proven yourself a Christian to me in ways I'll never forget. My old mother was a member of the church and they let her go hungry, when I was too little to take care of her; and if it hadn't been for you she would have died then. But you fed her, and if there's a Heaven, she's there, and you'll be there too. But what makes me mad is, that these fellows who never do anything, are just as sure of it as you who do so much."
"Ah, George," said Wicks; "that help I give your maw warn't nothin'. Do you think I'd see her suffer? Why, I knowed her when she was a girl."
"I know, Uncle Bobbie, but that isn't the question. Why, don't the church do some of the things they are always talking about?"
"Do infidels do any more?" asked Mr. Wicks.
"No, they don't," answered George, "but they don't thank God that Jesus
Christ was crucified, so that they might get to Heaven, either."
"Thar's one fellow that I didn't feed," said the old man, after a long pause. "That same printer called here and I didn't give him nothin' to do. I've thought of it many a time since though, and asked the Lord to forgive me for sech carelessness. And so he's got a job with you, has he? Well, I'm mighty glad. But say, George, were you at our church yesterday?"
"No," answered Udell, "Why?"
"Oh, nothin'; only I thought from the way you've been preachin'
Cameron's sermon, that you'd heard him give it, that's all."
CHAPTER V
"There's only one girl in this world for me," whistled Dick, as he made a form ready for the press. Only in his own mind he rendered it, "There's not one girl in this world for me;" and from Dick's point of view his version was the better one. Thus far in his life there had come no woman's influence; no loving touch of a girlish hand to help in moulding his character; no sweet voice bidding him do right; no soft eyes to look praise or blame. He had only the memory of his mother.