“It is what you will understand, but a great many people wouldn't. It is so nice that you understand things! I feel just like saying, 'Thank the Lord.'”
“Do you mean to convey the idea that only a very few favored people feel like that? I don't know of a person who has not great occasion. What is your special one?”
“Evan, the last boy had his boots blacked, and a fresh paper collar on!”
Mr. Roberts threw back his head and laughed,—a genial, hearty laugh. His wife looked on, smiling. There is a great deal of character in a laugh, remember; you would have known that this was a sympathetic one.
Mr. Roberts was entirely capable of realizing what this said to his wife about the future of her boys. It was becoming certain that their self-respect was awakened.
A few days thereafter occurred another of those little things which mark some characters.
Dirk, at Mrs. Saunders' breakfast-table on Sabbath morning, heard talk that on Monday he recalled. By the way, I should have told you of one other way in which the Sabbath became a marked day to him. He slept in the little room which opened from Ried's, but his meals were picked up at a restaurant, as occasion offered,—a much nicer and surer method of living than he had ever known before. Even the commonest restaurant had great respectability to him. Yet you will remember that he had by this time taken several suppers in Mrs. Roberts' dining-room. He knew that there was a difference in things; in fact, his experience now stretched over infinite differences; but the first time he sat down to Mrs. Saunders' breakfast-table, on a Sabbath morning, he discovered another grade: this by no means belonged to the restaurant class? The Sunday breakfasts and dinners were some of Mrs. Saunders' quiet ways of helping along the work of the Christian world. Many a young man appeared at her table as the guest of Ried or of Dr. Everett, or of some other of the boarders, who was unaware that he owed the pleasant experience to the landlady.
Well, Dirk at the Sabbath-table heard talk of one General Burton, famous as a soldier, a scholar, and an orator. General Burton was in the city, the guest of a prominent man; he was to speak on the following evening in one of the great halls, and much eager talk was had concerning him; great desire was expressed to hear him, to get a glimpse of him. Dirk listened in silence, but had his own thoughts about what it must be to have people talking about one, wanting to get a glimpse of one, and next, what it must be to be intimate with such people. Did Mrs. Roberts know the great man? he wondered. And then Dirk smiled as he thought how queer it was that he should know Mrs. Roberts; that he might, in fact, be called intimately acquainted with her!
Remembering this reverie of his, you will better understand how he felt on Monday morning, as he made his way in haste down a quiet part of one of the up-town streets, intent on an errand that required promptness, to hear his name called by Mrs. Roberts.
“Good morning!” she said. “Are you in too great haste to recognize your friends? I want to introduce you to a friend of mine. General Burton, Mr. Colson. General, this is one of my young men, of whom I told you.”