“Oh, they are demanding a little high tragedy,” he said, “which I sometimes give them. It assists in their reading lessons,” he explained, apologetically, and with that he gave them what Hughie called, “that rigmarole beginning, 'Friends, Romans, countrymen,'” Mark Antony's immortal oration.
“Well,” said the minister, as they drove away from the school, “what do you think of that, now?”
“Marvelous!” exclaimed his wife. “What dramatic power, what insight, what interpretation!”
“You may say so,” exclaimed her husband. “What an actor he would make!”
“Yes,” said his wife, “or what a minister he would make! I understand, now, his wonderful influence over Hughie, and I am afraid.”
“O, he can't do Hughie any harm with things like that,” replied her husband, emphatically.
“No, but Hughie now and then repeats some of his sayings about—about religion and religious convictions, that I don't like. And then he is hanging about that Twentieth store altogether too much, and I fancied I noticed something strange about him last Friday evening when he came home so late.”
“O, nonsense,” said the minister. “His reputation has prejudiced you, and that is not fair, and your imagination does the rest.”
“Well, it is a great pity that he should not do something with himself,” replied his wife. “There are great possibilities in that young man.”
“He does not take himself seriously enough,” said her husband. “That is the chief trouble with him.”