“What was there in it?” said Mr. Small. “Sickness, death?”
“No; he wanted his thick coat expressed up. But my wife didn’t get over the shock for some time. Wonderful thing that telegraph. Here’s a man standing a hundred miles off, like enough, and harpooning an idea chock right into your mind.”
“Then that was a beautiful truth,” said Maria, “that Father and Shakspere would probably be changed round in heaven. I always said Father wasn’t appreciated here.”
“Well,” said Apollos, “’tis always so; we don’t begin to realize the value of a thing tell we lose it. Now that we sort o’ stand and gaze at Uncle Capen at a fair distance, as it were, he looms. If he only hedn’t kep’ so quiet always about these ’ere wonders; a man really ought, in justice to himself, to blow his own horn jest a little. But that was a grand discourse, wasn’t it, now?”
“Oh, yes,” said Maria, “though I felt nervous for the young man; but when you come to think what materials he had to make a sermon out of, why, how could he help it? And yet I doubt not he takes all the credit to himself.”
“I should really have liked to have heard Father Cobb treat the subject,” said Mrs. Small, rising to go, and nodding to her husband. “’Twas a grand theme. But it was a real chance for the new minister. Such an opportunity doesn’t happen not once in a lifetime.”
THE next morning, after breakfast, on his way home from the post-office, the minister stopped in at Dr. Hunter’s office.
The doctor was reading a newspaper.
Holt took a chair in silence.
The doctor laid down the paper and eyed him quizzically, and then slowly shook his head.