Mrs. Elderkin had been zealous in neighborly offices, and had brought, in addition to a great basket of needed appliances, a silver porringer, which, with wonderful foresight, had been ordered from a Hartford jeweller in advance. The out-of-door man, Larkin, took a well-meaning pride in this accession to the family,—walking up and down the street with a broad grin upon his face. He also became the bearer, in behalf of the Tew partners, of a certain artful contrivance of tin ware for the speedy stewing of pap, which, considering that the donors were childless people, was esteemed a very great mark of respect for the minister.
Would it be strange, if the father felt a new ambition stirring in him, as he listened from his study to that cry of a child in the house? He does feel it, and struggles against it. Are not all his flock his spiritual children? and is he not appointed of Heaven to lead them toward the rest which is promised? Should that babe be more to him than a hundred others who are struggling through life's snares wearily? It may touch him, indeed, cruelly to think it; but is not the soul of the most worthless person of his parish as large in the eye of the Master as this of his first-born? Shall these human ties supplant the spiritual ones by which we are all coheirs of eternal death or of eternal life? And in this way the minister schools himself against too demonstrative a joy or love, and prays God silently that His gift may not be a temptation.
For all this, however, there is many a walk which would have been taken of old under the orchard trees now transferred to the chamber, where he paces back and forth with the babe in his arms, soothing its outcry, as he thinks out his discourse for the following Sabbath.
In due time Mrs. Handby returns to her home. The little child pushes through its first month of venturesome encounter with the rough world it has entered upon bravely; and the household is restored to its uniform placidity. The affairs of the parish follow their accustomed course. From time to time there are meetings of the "Consociation," or other ministerial assemblages, in the town, when the parsonage is overflowing, and Rachel, with a simple grace, is compelled to do the honors to a corps of the Congregational brotherhood. As for the parson, he was like a child in all household matters. Over and over he would invite his brethren flocking in from the neighboring villages to pass the night with him, when Rachel would decoy him into a corner, and declare, with a most pitiable look of distress, that not a bed was unoccupied in the house. Whereupon the goodman would quietly take his hat, and trudge away to Squire Elderkin's, or, on rarer occasions, to Deacon Tourtelot's, and ask the favor of lodging with them one of his clerical brethren.
At other times, before some such occasion of clerical entertainment, the little housewife, supported by Esther with broom and a great array of mops, would wait upon the parson in his study and order him away to his walk in the orchard,—an order which the poor man never ventured to resist; but, taking perhaps a pocket volume of Doddridge, or of Cowper,—the only poet he habitually read,—he would sally out with hat and cane,—this latter a gift of an admiring parishioner, which it pleased Rachel he should use, and which she always brought to him at such times, with a little childish mime of half-entreaty and half-command that it was not in his heart to resist, and which on rare occasions (that were subject of self-accusation afterward) provoked him to an answering kiss. At which Rachel:—
"Now go and leave us, please; there's a good man! And mind," (shaking her forefinger at him,) "dinner at half past twelve: Larkin will blow the shell."
The parson, as he paced back and forth under the apple-trees, out of sight, and feeling the need of more vigorous exercise than his usual meditative gait afforded, would on occasions brandish his cane and assume a military air and stride, (he remembered the Major's only too well,) getting in a glow with the unusual movement, and in the heat of it thanking God for all the blessings that had befallen him: a pleasant home; a loving wife; a little boy to bear the name, in which, with all his spiritual tendencies, he yet took a very human pride; health,—and he whisked his cane as vigorously as ever the Major had done his cumbrous sword,—the world's comforts; a congregation that met him kindly, that listened kindly. Was he not leading them in the path of salvation, and rejoicing in the leadership?
And then, to himself,—"Be careful, careful, Benjamin Johns, that you take not too great a pride in this work and home of yours. You are but an instrument in greater hands; He doeth with you what seemeth Him best. Let not the enticements of the world be too near your thought." In this way it was that the minister pruned down all the shoots of his natural affections, lest they might prove a decoy to him, and wrapped himself ever more closely in the rigors of his chosen theology.
As the boy Reuben grows, and gains a firmer footing, he sometimes totters beside the clergyman in these orchard walks, clinging blindly to his hand, and lifting his uncertain feet with great effort over the interrupting tufts of grass, unheeded by the minister, who is pondering some late editorial of the "Boston Recorder." But far oftener the boy is with the mother, burying his face in that dear lap of hers,—lifting the wet face to have tears kissed away and forgotten. And as he thrives and takes the strength of three or four years, he walks beside her under the trees of the village street, clad in such humble finery as the Handby grandparents may have bestowed; and he happens oftenest, on these strolls with Rachel, into the hospitable home of the Elderkins, where there are little ones to romp with the boy. Most noticeable of all, just now, one Philip Elderkin, (of whom more will have to be said as this story progresses,) only a year the senior of Reuben, but of far stouter frame, who looks admiringly on the minister's child, and as he grows warm in play frights him with some show of threat, which makes the little Reuben run for cover to the arms of Rachel. Whereat the mother kisses him into boldness, and tells him that Phil is a good boy and means no harm to him.
Often, too, in the square-topped chaise, the child is seated on a little stool between the parson and his wife, as they drive away upon their visits to the outskirts of the parish,—puzzling them with those strange questions which come from a boy just exploring his way into the world of talk.