Mr. Snell uncrossed his legs, and stooped to pick up a last, which he proceeded to scan with a shrewd, critical eye.
“Narrer foot,” he said to Mr. Hamblin.
“Private last—Doctor Hunter’s,” said Mr. Hamblin, laying down a boot upon which he was stitching an outer sole, and rising to make a ponderous, elephantine excursion across the quaking shop to the earthen water-pitcher, from which he took a generous draft.
“Well, Brother Snell,” said Mr. Noyes,—they were members together of a secret organization, of which Mr. Snell was P. G. W. T. F., “ain’t you going to tell us? What is this job? That is to say, what—is it?”
Brother Snell set his thumbs firmly in the armholes of his waistcoat, surveyed the smoke-stained pictures pasted on the wall, looked keen, and softly whistled. At last he condescended to explain.
“Preaching Uncle Capen’s funeral sermon.”
There was a subdued general laugh. Even Mr. Hamblin’s leathern apron shook.
Mr. Noyes, however, painfully looking down upon his beard to draw out a white hair, maintained his serious expression.
“I don’t see much ‘job’ in that,” he said. “A minister’s supposed to preach a hundred and four sermons in each and every year, and there’s plenty more where they come from. What’s one sermon more or less when stock costs nothing? It’s like wheeling gravel from the pit.”
