He hesitated and flushed, then met her gaze squarely, as he said—
"The simple truth is, Mrs. Morgan, I am doing just nothing with these young people, and I don't know what to do."
"I know," she said quickly; "the work is immense, and little patient efforts sometimes seem like 'just nothing.' But, after all, how can you tell? The earnest words dropped here and there, even in such soil as this, may spring up and bear fruit; so long as you meet your people in this way, once a week, and can gather them about you as you do, I shouldn't allow myself to get discouraged."
Evidently she did not understand him. He was leaving her to suppose that he was moving quietly around among them dropping seed, when, in reality, he had been chatting with them about the skating and the sleighing, and the coming festival, and the recent party, and had dropped no earnest, honest seed of any sort. His honest heart shrank from bearing unmerited approval.
"I am literal in my statement," he said earnestly, "though you are kind enough to translate it figuratively. I do not feel that I am saying anything to help these young people, save as I am helping them to have a pleasant evening. I don't know how that is going to tell for the future, and I don't know what I can do to tell toward that. I cannot get one into a corner and preach a sermon to him at such a time as this; now, can I?"
"I shouldn't think it would be a good place in which to read sermons," said Louise, with smiling eyes and grave mouth. "But, then, we who never preach at all will not allow you to profess that the sermon is the only way of seed-sowing."
"I did not mean literal preaching, of course," he said, a trifle annoyed; "but what I mean is, there is no opportunity here for personal effort of any sort. I am always afraid to attempt anything of the kind, lest I may prejudice people against the whole subject. Don't you think there is danger of that?"
"Well, I don't know," Louise said thoughtfully. "If I were to talk with one of my friends who is not acquainted with you, and tell her how kind you were, and how interested in all young people, and how pleasant and helpful you were, it doesn't seem to me that I should prejudice that friend against you. Why should I feel afraid of prejudicing them against my Saviour?"
He looked at her doubtfully.
"Don't you think that young people look upon this question with different eyes from that which they give to any other? Aren't they more afraid of hearing it talked about?"