A Good Samaritan

by Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

"Judge Rush, this is my cousin, Mr. Fairfax," Reed presented him, and in a moment Rex's friend, the breeze, was helping hospitality on with gay little refreshing dashes at a warm, silvered head, as Judge Rush sat in the biggest chair at the big open window. He beamed upon the young man with interested, friendly eyes.

"That's all very well about the quadrangle, Mr. Reed. It certainly is beautiful and like the English Universities," he broke into a sentence genially. "But I wish to talk to Mr. Fairfax. I've come to bring you the first news, Mr. Fairfax, of what you will hear officially within a day or two—that the vestry of St. Eric's hope you will consider a call to be our assistant rector." Rex's heart almost stopped beating, and his smile faded as he stared breathless at this portly and beneficent Mercury. Mercury went on "A vestry meeting was held last night in which this was decided upon. Your brilliant record in this seminary and other qualifications which have been mentioned to us by high authorities, were the reasons for this action which appeared upon the surface, but I want you to know the inner workings—I asked your cousin to bring me here that I might have the pleasure of telling you."

It was rather warm, and the old gentleman had climbed stairs, and his conversation had been weighty and steady. He arrested its flow for a moment and took a long breath. "Don't stop," said Rex earnestly, and the others broke into sudden laughter.

"I like that," Judge Rush sputtered, chuckling. "You're ready to let me kill myself, if needs be, to get the facts. All right, young man—I like impetuosity—it means energy. I'll go on. The facts not known to the public, which I wish to tell you, are as follows. After your failure to keep your appointment on the evening of the 7th, I was about through with you. I considered you careless both of your own interests and ours, and we began to look for another assistant. A man who fitted the place as you did seemed hard to find and the case was in statu quo when, two nights ago, my son brought home young William Strong to dinner. Our families are old friends and Billy's father and I were chums in college, so the boy is at home in our house. As you probably know, he has the gift of telling a good story, so when he began on the events of an evening which you will remember——"

Rex's deep laughter broke into the dignified sentences at this point.

"I see you remember." Judge Rush smiled benignly. "Well, Mr. Fairfax, Billy made an amusing story of that evening. Only the family were at the table and he spared himself not at all. He had been in Orange the day before, and the young lady in the case had told him how you had protected him at your own expense—he made that funny too, but I thought it very fine behavior—very fine, indeed, sir." Rex's face flushed under this. "And as I thought the whole affair over afterwards, I not only understood why you had failed me, but I honored you for attempting no explanation, and I made up my mind that you were the man we wanted. Yes, sir, the man we want. A man who knows how to deal with the situations of to-day, with the vices of a great city, that is what we want. I consider tact, and broad-mindedness and self-sacrifice no small qualities for a minister of the gospel; and a combination of those qualities, as in you, I consider exceptional. So I went to this vestry meeting primed, and I told them we had got to have you, sir—and we've got to. You'll come?"

The question was much like an order, but Rex did not mind. "Indeed, I'll come, Judge Rush," he said, and his manner of saying it won the last doubtful bit of the Judge's heart.

The Sunday morning when the new assistant preached his first sermon in St. Eric's, there sat well back in the congregation a dark-eyed girl, and with her a tall and powerful young man, whose deep shoulders and movements, as of a well fitted machine, advertised an athlete in perfect form. The girl's face was rapt as she followed, her soul in her eyes, the clean-cut, short sermon, and when the congregation filtered slowly down the aisles she said not a word. But as the two turned into the street she spoke at last.