"Lose my rheumatism!" The old man repeated the words in the utmost astonishment.
"Why, yes, of course you would," Carol said with that wonderfully sweet smile which won all hearts. "I had hip-disease; but I lost it."
"Well, now, young gentleman, I can say with absolute truth that I have never been told that before--no, never! though I've been a regular church attendant since I was a little choir boy, and never left off going till the joints in my old legs grew so stiff I couldn't walk. It'd want a lot of faith, sir, to believe that just reading the Bible would make 'em lissom again."
"Faith comes with understanding. There is another book; it is called Key to the Scriptures. I haven't a copy of that book now, but I can remember so much of it, I shall be able to help you to understand the Bible perhaps a little better. We will commence with the first chapter of Genesis."
"Yes, now; I remember that chapter pretty well. I learnt it at Sunday School sixty years ago, and I've never quite forgotten it. I could repeat verses straight off now."
"And has it never helped you all through your life?"
"Well, no. I can't say that chapter has. I have found comfort sometimes from the Psalms. 'The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want,' I have often turned to when we'd a growing family and work was slack."
"Let me read the chapter now and then we will talk about it."
The boy opened the Bible, and slowly with an impressiveness which the old man had never before heard, he read the first chapter of Genesis, and three verses of the second chapter. He read as one reads words that are very familiar and understandable.
"Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them, and God saw everything that He had made, and behold it was very good." He repeated the words from memory, looking with a kindly smile at the old man, as he asked the question: "If God looked upon everything which He had created, and declared it very good--where do the things come from that are not good? Who created them?"