“They mean,” smiled Tom Hammond, “that Jesus Christ, God’s son, may come suddenly to-day, before even you have time to finish the work upon my order!”
The man’s face wore a puzzled look. Then suddenly it brightened a little, as he said:—
“Ah! I sees, its somethink religious. That aint in my line, not a bit, sir. I aint built that way. Now, my misses is! She’s the best wife a man ever had, I can’t find a speck o’ fault wi’ her, but, there it is, yer know, she’s gone, fair gone, sir, on religious things!”
“Do you love her? Would you like to lose her?” asked Hammond.
“Like to lose her, sir? why, no, sir! I believes I should—I should—well I don’t know what I should do, if she wur took!”
There was a note of deep gravity in Tom Hammond’s voice, as he said:—
“Then let that motto warn you, as you prepare to write it, that even before you can finish it, the Christ who is to come again, who will surely come now very soon, may come. Then, when you go to look for your wife, when you are perhaps expecting her to call you to your tea, she will be missing. You will call her, search for her, yet never find her. Because, if she is a true child of God, she, with all true Christians, will have been snatched away unseen from the world, caught up to meet their Lord in the air.”
“Good gracious, sir! yer give me the creeps!” gasped the man.
“‘Seek ye the Lord’—your good wife’s Lord,—‘while He may be found,’ my friend.” With this parting word Tom Hammond left the shop.
Two hours and a half later the splendid bit of sign writing hung upon the wall of Hammond’s room.