“Nothin' to be mad about,” he returned, kicking the snake with his foot.
“Well, I hope you won't hate me,” she said. “I feel that I know you pretty well. Uncle told us a lot about you that day at the hotel. He said you were the bravest boy he ever saw and the hardest worker. I saw you looked embarrassed that day, and he had no right to tease you as he did; but he was—of course, you know what was the matter with him?”
Paul nodded. “I wasn't going to pay any attention to him,” he declared. “I wasn't—wasn't fixed up fit to—to be seen by anybody, any more than I am now, for that matter; but I can't do the work I have to do and go dressed like a town dude.”
“Of course not—of course not,” Ethel agreed, sympathetically, “and Uncle says you spend all you make on others, anyway. He was telling us about how you loved your father and took care of him. You know, I think that is wonderful, and so does mama. Boys are not like that in Atlanta; they are lazy and spoiled, and bad, generally. People in a city are so different, you know. Mama says the greatest men were once poor country boys. I'd think that was encouraging, if I was—if I were you—see, I make slips myself! After if you must always say were to be strictly correct. Just think of it, when I am grown up you may be a great man, and be ashamed even to know me.”
He shrugged his shoulders and frowned. The flush had partly left his face, leaving splotches of white here and there. “No hopes of me ever mak-in' any sort of rise,” he declared. “There is too much to do at home; I don't get time to go to school or study.”
“What a pity!” Ethel sighed. She swept him from head to foot critically. Touches of pink lay on her cheeks just below her earnest eyes. “You are good-looking—you—you really are handsome, and so strong and brave! Somehow I feel certain that you are going to be successful. I—I am going to pray for it. They say God answers prayers when they are the right kind, and I know mine would be right.”
“I don't believe any of that rubbish,” he said, loftily. “I've heard your uncle Jim laugh at the preachers and folks that get converted one day and are plumb over it the next. He says they are the biggest fools in the world.”
“I know he talks that way, and it worries mama awfully,” the girl said. “I'm afraid he's terribly bad. You see, he drinks, plays cards, curses, and is hard on the negroes who work for him. Now, the truth is that the people who go to church really are better than he is, and that, in itself, ought to show he's wrong—don't you think so?”
“He just uses his natural brain,” Paul returned, philosophically. “He says there is just one life, an' he's goin' to get all he can out of it. I don't blame him. He's rich—he can buy and sell the folks round here that say he don't know what he's talkin' about. He says there ain't no God, and he can prove it. He made it purty plain one day while he was talking to a crowd at the tan-yard. He told 'em, if they believed there was any such thing, for 'em to pray for some'n and see if they'd get it. He told about a gang of Methodists that was praying for money to make a church bigger, and the lightning struck it and burned it down.”
“Did you never pray yourself?” Ethel questioned, quite irrelevantly.