"Why this about the youngster, and his fishes and bread, and such lots of folks eating 'em, and more left when they got done than there was when they begun. Likely story, ain't it?"
Dora's eyes were large and grave.
"Why, Tode, it's in the Bible," she said, reverently.
Tode knew nothing about reverence, and next to nothing about the Bible.
"What of that?" he said, defiantly. "It's queer stuff all the same; and what did that old man mean about his friend, and taking care of folks, everybody, good or bad, and feeding 'em, and all that?"
"It's about Jesus, Tode. Don't you know; he died, you see, for us, and if we love him he'll take care of us, and take us to heaven. Sometimes do you think that you'll belong to him, Tode? I do once in a while."
"I don't know anything what you're talking about," was Tode's answer, more truthful than grammatical.
"Why, give your heart to him, you know, and love him, and pray, and all that. But, Tode, won't you run around to Martyn's and order the carriage for us? John was to wait there until we came, and I guess he'll think we are never coming."
Mrs. Hastings repeated the direction, and Tode vanished, brushing by in his exit the very man who had prayed at his dying mother's bedside years before, and who had intended to keep an eye on him. As he slid along the icy pavements the boy ruminated on what he had heard, and especially on that last explanation, "Why, give your heart to him, you know, and love him, and pray, and all that." To whom, and how, and where, and when? What a perfectly bewildering confusion it all was to Tode.
"I'll be hanged if I can make head or tail to any of it," he said aloud.