Jack Butt was the first to speak—
“Isn’t this beautiful, sir? To see all these Holy Brothers and Sisters coming out to enjoy themselves? I think everybody ought to be a Holy Brother, don’t you?”
Huey did. He even went so far as to buy a pink rosette of an obliging female close at hand and pin it on his coat, amidst general approval.
“I wish I could always be with the Brothers,” continued Butt, when they were well out in mid-harbour. “I am in a hateful business.”
“What is that?” asked Huey.
“My father bound me to a horse-trainer, and I’m a jockey; but my time is nearly up, and I want to leave it. So does mother want me; but what am I to do? Even if I tried to stop at my business I am growing too fast, and shall soon be too heavy, though I starve myself.”
“That is very sad,” responded Huey. “And what would you like to be?”
“Oh! I should like to go into the ministry; it’s such a beautiful life! No work to do, and eat as much as you like! There is nothing like it! I often wonder, don’t you, sir, that everybody isn’t a parson. So respectable and comfortable a life. But there’s the expense.”
“What expense?” said Huey, his eyes sparkling in spite of him.
“One has to go to college and study, and do nothing for two or three years but learn out of books, and that wants money, you know, sir.”