They found the old man not much changed from what he had been when they saw him last. A little stouter, perhaps, and a little grayer he looked, as, whip in hand, he stood waiting the arrival of the train, his face all aglow with delight, when the two young girls appeared upon the platform, looking so pretty and stylish in their new spring dresses, that he involuntarily gave a kind of low whistle, and said under his breath:
“Guy, ain’t they stunners? They beat Ruth Gardner all hollow. And look at that gal’s ankles, will you; it’s enough to make a chap older than I am crawl, to see such things,” he continued, as the tops of Maude’s boots became visible in her descent from the car.
In a moment both the girls had caught him round the neck, making him very red in the face, and “awful ticklish at the pit of his stomach,” as they kissed him more than once, and then kept hold of his hands while they asked him scores of questions.
“There,—there; yes, yes; let me be now, can’t you; yes, yes,” he said. “I’m about strangled with your hugs and kisses, and I not used to it, and the folks in the car lookin’ on. It’ll give a feller the dyspepsia to have his digester so riled up. These your traps, hey? Look like little housen; shall have to come back for ’em sure, for Bobtail can’t carry all creation” he continued, as Maude pointed out her own and Edna’s baggage.
Uncle Phil was very proud of his guests and very desirous to show them off, and making an excuse to see a man about re-setting a light of stained glass which some “tarnal boy had broken in one of the windows of his synagogue,” he drove the entire length of the street on which ‘Squire Gardner lived, and felt repaid for his trouble when he saw Miss Ruth looking at them from her chamber window. He did not find his man, but “Ruth saw the gals and the gals’ hats, which he was so glad were not such all-fired lookin’ things as she wore and tried to make folks think was the fashion. Maybe ’twas with a certain class, but needn’t tell him that fust cut, who knew what was what, wore such ’bominable things. Why, Ruth’s hat looks jest like a tunnel with a ribbon tied ’round it,” he said to the young ladies, who accused him of having set up as a critic in dress, Maude promising to show him some fashions, “which would make him stare more than Ruth Gardner’s tunnel had done.”
They found the nicest, cosiest tea waiting for them, and Aunt Becky was quite as much pleased to see them as Uncle Phil had been. The front chamber was in perfect order, and Uncle Phil had tried his hand at a bouquet, made from daffodils and evergreens, and arranged in a broken pitcher.
They had come to spend a week, and the days flew rapidly, each one seeming to Uncle Phil shorter and happier than the preceding one. He had a great deal to tell them about his church, which was nearly completed, and would be ready for consecration in August, when the bishop had promised to be there.
“But I tell you what ’tis, gals,” he said, as he sat with them inside the church, which he had been showing them, “if there’s anything makes a chap feel like cussin’, it’s buildin’ a meetin’ house, and seein’ to it yourself; not that I do swear right out loud,” he added, as he saw Edna’s look of surprise. “I hold on till I git the hiccups, and feel at my stomach some, as I do when you two are haulin’ me over, only not quite so—so—tural-lural, you know; first, thar’s the Orthodox pitchin’ into me, and the Unitarians, who kind of claim me, you know; and then, if you’ll b’leeve it, the Second Adventists held some meetin’s in the school-house, and pitched right and left into my poor little chapel; called it one of the ten horns, and a ritual, and the Lord knows what; but the wust of all was the divinity chap from New York, who came out here, and preached a spell last winter; sort of a candidate, though he sniffed high at the idee, and said he’d never stoop to that. He preached in the Town Hall, and Ruth Gardner came up from New York, where she spent a month, with her head fuller of jimcracks than brains, and she jined the Episcopals, and helped run the machine, and rolled her eyes up till you could see nothin’ but the whites, and got after the minister, and set to callin’ him ‘Father,’ when, bless my soul, he wasn’t a half-a-dozen years older than she! And between ’em they raised the very old Harry with their processions, and boys dressed like girls, and flags, and crossin’s, and curtcheys, which they called Jenny-something, and the land knows what they didn’t do or would have done if I hadn’t raised a row, and said they could do what they liked in the Town Hall, and go to the old driver with their flummeries, but in my synagogue I’d have no such carryin’s on. I was a miserable enough sinner, and was willin’ to own it, and had done a lot of things I didn’t orto have done, and when I went to meetin’, I wanted to hear now an’ then a word about that Man who died over on Calvary a good many years ago, and not all about the church, the church, and the fathers, and the medival age. You orto have seen how the priest and Ruth Gardner looked at me when I got right up in meetin’ and spoke my piece, for, I vum, I couldn’t stan it when they give the bread and wine first to widder Jones’s two little boys, the wust scamps in town, who rob gardens, and orchards, and birds’-nests in the summer, and who, only the day before, had broke my gate, and denied it up hill and down. I couldn’t keep still no how, and freed my mind and quit, and the next day the priest and Ruth called on me,—he in his long frock coat, and she with a chain and cross as long as my arm, I’ll bet. They as’t me what I did believe, and I said I believed the Creed, word for word; and the Bible, and the Prayer-Book; and more than all the rest, I believed in the Man that died; and I knew He never had any such goin’s on in that upper chamber, nor on the deck of the ship, nor up on the mountain, nor in that house in Bethany where He loved to stay. Everything with Him was simple and plain as A B C. When the folks was tired, and sick, and sorry, He said, ‘Come to me and rest,’ and He didn’t drive ’em crazy with forty-’leven ceremonies. ‘Come to me; believe on me, that I can save you; that is all,’ and He will. I’m just as certain as that my name is Philip. I’m a wicked old rat, but I do mean to be better; and I’ve took to readin’ my Bible some, and I say the Lord’s Prayer every night when I ain’t too sleepy.”
He was talking more to himself now than to the girls at his side, but they both felt that though there was still much of poor sinful nature clinging to the old man, he was making an effort to do better, and was drawing nearer to Him whom he so touchingly spoke of as the “Man who died.”
The building of the church had evidently been a great trouble to him, but that was nearly over now.