"Hank, you are entirely mistaken. I have seen you go into Green Valley parlors and every other room in the house. I watched you move that clumsy old sideboard of Mrs. Luttins down that narrow stairway and then through the little side gate. You never chipped a bit of plaster or trampled a flower beside the walk. Why, you never even tore a bit of vine off the gate. And yesterday I saw you walking your horses ever so carefully to the station because inside the van little Jimmy Drummond was lying on stretchers, going to the hospital. And I was told that Doc Philipps said he wouldn't have trusted another driver with Jimmy."
"But," groaned Hank, "people like me don't go to church."
"Hank, most ministers don't ride around the country on a moving dray. But I rode out with you many a time and I sort of feel that you might come along with me now and then and see the people and things along my route. You've given me a good time and I'd like to pay back. You'll like the music and I'm sure you'll understand it all, because I talk English you know. And anyhow, things get as lonesome sometimes for a minister in the pulpit as the roads get for a dray driver and I'd appreciate it to have a friend like you along. I never know when I'll need a lift and a little help that you could give. Sometimes we have to move the Sunday-school organ about and there are windows that stick and all manner of things about a church that only a practiced mover and driver could do. You know the janitor is rather old and infirm and as for me—well, Hank, when you come down to it, that's about all we ministers are, just movers. Our business is to help find just the right and happiest places for people, to show them their part in the game of life and keep them from bruising themselves and others. I'm doing about the same sort of work as you are; that's why I'm asking you to come along with me."
"Well—if you put it that way,—" murmured Hank, still miserable, "why, maybe I could drop in. Billy's ordered me a new suit and so—"
"That settles it then, Hank. For there's no sense in getting a new suit unless you go out in it. And there's no sense in going out unless you have some definite place to go to. Why, half the people get clothes just to go to church and the other half go to church just to wear their clothes. I'll expect you. You can sit comfortably in the back and watch things and tell me later what you think of the way things are managed here. You'll see things from the door that I never see from the pulpit."
Hank went to church in a pair of shoes that squeaked agonizingly and a suit of clothes that was a marvel of mail-order device. He also wore a Stetson hat that was new when he entered the church door but which, through nervous manipulation, aged terribly in that first half hour.
He came early because he felt that he could not endure the thought of entering a crowded church and then suffered torment as one by one the congregation nodded to him or addressed him in sepulchral whispers. When, however, Grandma Wentworth sat down beside him and visited comfortably before services, and Nan Ainslee stopped to thank him for something or other he had done for her the week before, he felt better.
As soon as Jim Tumley began to sing and the minister to talk Hank forgot about himself and became absorbed in the proceedings. He told the minister later that he'd meant to keep an eye on things for him but that he got so interested he'd forgotten. About all that he had observed was that Mrs. Sloan passed her handkerchief a little too frequently and publicly to the little Sloans. Hank said he thought they were old enough to have handkerchiefs of their own. He also felt sure, he said, that Mrs. Osborn and Mrs. Pelham, Jr. were on the outs again, because of the fact that though Mrs. Pelham's switch was falling loose and Mrs. Osborn sitting right behind her saw it, she made no effort to repin it or tell the unfortunate woman about it. Hank further informed the minister that that second Crawley boy was a limb and closed his observations by asking the Reverend John Roger Churchill Knight if he didn't think Nanny Ainslee was the prettiest girl in church? Whereupon the minister promptly agreed with him.
That, then, was Hank Lolly's introduction to a proper and conventional religious life. Hank, as soon as he felt sure that he was going to survive the experience, became wonderfully interested and the next Sunday reappeared with Barney in tow. It seems that Barney also had been provided with a new suit and accessories and Hank had promptly demanded his presence in church.
"You ought to go once, Barney, if only to show the minister that you're rightly grateful to him for showing you about them there books and figures and a-pointing out your mistakes to you. And anyhow, if you don't go, you'll be hanging out in that there pool-room, and first thing you know you won't be decent and respectable and Billy'll have to fire you."