they implored softly. Neither of them had the remotest idea what inheritance meant—they would have besought as willingly a blessing for irrelevance or inelegance; but to the assistant clergyman, whose nervous scratching of his nose, while waiting for the alms-basin to reach him, was to Edgar and Tim as definite and eagerly awaited a part of the service as any other detail, the slow-syllabled Gregorian cadence brought the word in a sudden new light and he made it the text for a sermon so successful as to get him, a little later, a parish of his own. This leads us to many interesting conclusions, musical and other.
The rector noticed with pleasure the seedy-looking man in the back of the church: he was just then smarting a little under the accusation of “aristocratic tendencies”: a body of conservatives had never approved of the boy-choir. He hoped to get the man into the Brotherhood of St. Andrew, if he were allied to no other organization.
Mr. Ogden, as we know, was on business of his own—business that kept him glaring fixedly in the rector’s direction, which encouraged that good man still further. It is to be doubted if the Brotherhood would have appealed to him, however. Not that he would have been hindered by any narrow sectarian tendencies. Mrs. Ogden, who did up the shirt-waists of the Presbyterian minister’s daughter, was by her presented regularly with a missionary bank in the form of a papier-maché cottage with a chimney imitating red brick; and Edgar, employing a Napoleonic strategy, triumphantly attended the Methodist Christmas festivals and the Baptist Sunday-school picnics, the latter society offering a merry-go-round on a larger scale, the former providing the infant faithful with more practicable presents and larger candy-bags. Squealer, moreover, had sung “The Holy City” more than once for the Congregational Christian Endeavor Society, so that Mr. Ogden felt, with a certain justice, that his church connection did him credit on the whole, and excused himself from any undue energy in that direction.
He watched his son keenly, but Edgar’s ecclesiastical demeanor was without a flaw. Moreover, his plans were gradually maturing. He sang Amen at proper intervals and by a process of unconscious cerebration managed to get between the organist and the tenor, who depended on Mr. Fellowes to mark the time for him with his left hand, and in consequence of being unable to see him, bungled his offertory solo; but his thoughts were otherwhere. He had decided to slip out of the south transept door, thus eluding parental pursuit, and fight Howard Potter in his own back yard before he slept. He would practise upon his victim a recent scientific acquisition proudly styled by him “the upper-cut,” which he had learned from an acquaintance at the cost of ten cents and three sugar-cookies.
At this point the anthem-prelude drew him to his feet. He had saved his voice, according to directions, for his solo, and in the waiting hush every word flowed, soft and pure, to the end of the church.
“Mercy and truth, mercy and truth, mercy—” Ah, that exquisite soft swoop downward! The organ rippled on contentedly, a continuation of Edgar’s flutelike tones—“and truth are me-et together!” There was all the richness of a woman’s voice, all the passionless clearness of a boy’s, all the morning innocence of a child’s.
It occurred to him suddenly that the north transept would be safer—it was on the side farthest from home.
“Righteousness and peace, righteousness and peace have kissèd each other!”
He wondered if Howard had learned the upper-cut since their last encounter.
Tim’s face was as the face of an angel; a long slanting ray from the rose-window fell across his curls.