His friendship with Frank passed into a deeper, stronger phase than ever before. It might with much truth have been said of them as it was of two friends of old, that the soul of Bert was knit with the soul of Frank, and that Bert loved him as his own soul. They had so much in common now, and they found it so delightful to strengthen one another's hands in the Lord by talking together of His goodness.
There was one matter that troubled Frank deeply, and that formed the subject of many a long and earnest conversation. His father was a man about whose lack of religion there could be no doubt. He was a big, bluff, and rather coarse-grained man, not over-scrupulous in business, but upon the whole as honest and trustworthy as the bulk of humanity. By dint of sheer hard work and shrewdness he had risen to a position of wealth and importance, and, as self-made men are apt to do, laid much more stress upon what he owed to himself than upon what he owed to his Creator. In his own rough way, that is to say in somewhat the same fashion as we may suppose a lion loves his whelp, he loved the only child the wife long since dead had left him. He was determined that he should lack nothing that was worth having, and in nothing did Mr. Bowser show his shrewdness more clearly than in fully appreciating the advantage it was to Frank to be the chosen friend and constant companion of Lawyer Lloyd's son. He had manifested his satisfaction at the intimacy by having Frank make Bert handsome presents at Christmas time, and in other ways. In all this, however, his only thought had been for Frank. He made no attempt to cultivate intimate relations with the Lloyds on his own account. He thought them both too refined, and too religious for him, and accordingly declined so far as he civilly could, Mr. Lloyd's overtures toward a better acquaintance.
Such a man was Frank's father; and now that the boy's heart was full of joy and light, because the peace that passeth understanding was his, he longed that his father should share the same happy experience.
"If father were only a Christian, like your father, Bert, I would be the happiest boy in all the world," said he, one day. "Oh, Bert, what can I do to make him interested in religion?"
"Why don't you ask Dr. Chrystal to go and talk with him?" inquired Bert.
"It wouldn't be a bit of use. He won't go to church to hear Dr. Chrystal, nor any other minister, and he wouldn't listen to them if they came to see him. He says he has no faith in parsons, anyway."
"Well, do you think he would listen to father?" suggested Bert.
Frank's face lighted up. He had been thinking of this himself.
"Perhaps he would, Bert," he said, eagerly. "I know he thinks a great deal of your father. I've heard him say that he practised better than many of the parsons preached."
Bert flushed with pleasure at this frank compliment to his father.