Flossy had forgotten her charge; her face was all aglow; so was her heart. She knew more about Christian work than she did an hour before. She had learned that we must take the step that plainly comes next to be taken, no matter for the darkness of the day and the apparent gloom of the future. Work is ours; results are God's. This life business is divided. Partnership with God. Nothing but the work to do; so that it is done to the utmost limit of our best, the responsibility is the Lord's. That was blessed! She could dare to try.
Meantime the boy. He had listened in utmost silence, and with eyes that never for an instant left the speaker's face! When the spell was broken he drew a long sigh, and this was his mighty conclusion.
"That chap was enough sight meaner than I'd ever be, and yet he got to be some! I'll be blamed if I don't see what can be done in that line!"
A small beginning; so small that on Flossy's face it excited only smiles. She was ignorant, you know. To Mrs. Partridge that sentence would have been worth a wedge of gold. But it is possible that Flossy's first simple little reach after work may have fruit to bear.
It is difficult to begin to tell about that next day at Chautauqua. There was so much crowded into it that it would almost make a little book of itself. The morning was spent by a large class of people in a state of excited unrest and expectancy. The sensible ones by the hundreds, and indeed I suppose I may say by the thousands, went to the morning service, as usual, and heard the children's sermon, delivered by Dr. Newton; and those who did not, and who afterward had the misfortune to fall in with those who did, bemoaned their folly in not doing likewise. On the whole, the children, and those who had brains enough to become children for the time being, were the only comfortable ones at Chautauqua that Saturday morning.
The president was coming! So, apparently, was the rest of the world! Oh, the throngs and throngs that continually arrived! It of itself was a rare and never-to-be-forgotten novelty to those who had never in their lives before seen such a vast army of human beings gathered into a small space, and all perfectly quiet and correct, and even courteous in their deportment.
"Where are the drunken men?" said Marion, looking around curiously on the constantly increasing throng. "We always read of them as being in great crowds."
"Yes, and the people who swear," added Eurie. "I haven't heard an oath this morning, and I have roamed around everywhere. I must say Chautauqua will bear off the palm for getting together a most respectable-looking, well-behaved 'rabble!' That is what I overheard a sour-looking old gentleman, who doesn't approve of having a president—or of letting him come to a religious meeting, I don't know which—say would rush in to-day. It certainly is a remarkably orderly 'rush.' Girls, look at Dr. Vincent! I declare, Chautauqua has paid, just to watch him! He ought to be the president himself. I mean to vote for him when female suffrage comes in. Or a king! Wouldn't he make a grand king? How he would enjoy ordering the subjects and enforcing his laws!"
"All of which he seems able to do now," Marion said. "I don't believe he would thank you for a vote. His realm is large enough, and he seems to have willing subjects."
"He has go-ahead-a-tive-ness." Eurie said. "What is the proper word for that, school-ma'am? Executive ability, that's it. Those are splendid words, and they ought to be added to his name. I tell you what, girls, I wish we could cut him up into seven men, and take him home with us. Seven first-class men made out of him and distributed through the towns about us would make a new order of things."