“Cyrus isn’t going to be a minister?” repeated Estelle, reflectively. “Well, I shouldn’t think it would be much fun anyway; though people would give him all their nice things when he was invited to tea. I would much rather be a tin-peddler, or an essence-peddler, then I could put drops of essence of peppermint on all my lumps of sugar.”
“Why is a girl always so greedy?” inquired Dave, dispassionately. “But, really, when you come to think of what jolly things there are to do—killing Indians, and riding buffaloes, and being a pirate like Captain Kidd, it does seem kind of queer that a fellow should want to be a minister! But, then, it’s just like Cyrus to want to tell people what they ought to do and how bad they are when they can’t talk back.”
And these were children who went to Sunday-school, who read their verses and said their prayers every day! I felt a chilling dismay. I knew that it was not easy to recall the real ideas of one’s childhood, but surely we had never been like these small heathens!
“Oh, don’t you know, can’t you understand, that to teach people the gospel, to help them to be good, is better, higher than any of those things?” I cried, with desperate earnestness.
“Could Cyrus make people good?” asked Estelle reflectively. “He makes me bad some way; worse than anybody does, except Iky Barstow who calls me a hopper-grass. And then he thinks I am bad all the time, when I am really kind of mixed.”
“He thinks a fellow ought to like ’rithmetic,” said Dave meditatively, winding the string about his top, as we walked along, “and chop wood instead of going fishing. I suppose that’s the way all ministers begin,” he added, wagging his yellow head solemnly—as if preaching were the result of a long indulgence in erroneous opinions.
“But he’s got to be a minister, you know,” said Estelle, stopping suddenly in the road and giving a final severe twist to the rope that she had made of her apron—she was a nervous little thing, and tried Loveday’s patience by knotting and twisting her strings and her clothes. “He’s got to, because there’s our berry money in my bank. I—I put my bantam money in there, too.”
The color came and went in the child’s face as I gazed at her.
“Yes, that was why I sold my bantams. I didn’t tell. I wanted Cyrus to be a minister so much. I guess I was better last year. I had a temptation last week to spend the money for chocolate creams and a parasol with lace on it. But I couldn’t smash the bank because your berry money was in it, too. We’ll go back and tell Cyrus about the money and then he’ll know he must go to college and be a minister.” She seized my arm in her imperative little way.
“No, we won’t go back to Cyrus,” I said. “But I am going to see Mr. Grover, and you may go with me if you like. I want him to tell Cyrus that he isn’t seeing things in the right light.”