Theodore answered promptly:
"No, sir, I will not detain them; they have had speeches enough. Besides, my heart is quite too full for talking." At the same time he arose. "I would like to write my speech, though, if you please, sir. Have you pen and ink convenient?" And he went forward with the leader to the desk. A few quick dashes of the pen over a blank from his check-book, and he stood pledged for five hundred dollars for "Howard Mission."
"How much I have to thank Dr. Birge for preaching that glorious sermon on the 'tenths,' and dear grandma for teaching me with her white buttons the meaning of the same," he said to Dora as they made their way out from that beautiful haven into the reeking street. "How every single impulse for good counts back to some influence touched long ago by an unconscious hand! I wonder if the Christian world has an idea of what it is doing?"
They tarried but a few hours in Albany, long enough to visit that quiet grave with its simple tribute, "Dear Mother." And there again came to Theodore's heart sad memories of his father. Oh, if his body only lay there in quiet rest underneath those grasses; if he could have the privilege of setting up his headstone, and marking it with a word of respectful memory; if he could have but the faint hope of a meeting place for them all in that city beyond, what more could he ask in life? And yet who could tell? Perhaps it was even so; perhaps there had come even to his father an eleventh hour? The "arm of the Lord was not shortened" that it could not save where and when and how he would. And there had been prayers, constant and fervent, sent up for him; and perhaps the eleventh hour was yet to come; he might be still in this world of hope. Theodore's heart swelled at the thought.
"My darling," he said, turning toward the young face looking up to his, and full of tender sympathy, "he may be living yet—my poor father, you know. We will never cease to pray that if he is still on earth God will have mercy. We will pray together, will we not?"
And then both remembered that other father, about whose grave June roses were blossoming to-day, for whom they could pray nevermore; and so though she laid her hand in his in token of sympathy, she made no answer on account of fast falling tears.
"For our own room, Dora, in lieu of many pictures let us have some of these exquisite illuminated texts. I like them so much; and we can never tell how much good they may do a servant or a chance passer through. There are some in particular that I want to select." This Theodore said to his wife as they stood together in a picture store.
"There! I want that one above all others," and he held it up for her admiration. It was a beauty; the letters were exquisitely formed, and the words were: "The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good." Then they chose, "Peace be to this house"—this for the hall. And another favorite, "Hitherto hath the Lord helped us."