"I know it," he answered, "and, take it from me, when you once get started you will go ahead of stacks and stacks of them. Don't be ashamed to start at the bottom. Great men and women began that way, and you are not to blame for the poor chance you've had."
He saw that he had comforted her, and recounted his various adventures in seeking work. When he spoke of the offer Pilcher & Reed had made him she suddenly said, "Take them up, brother John."
"Why do you say that?" he inquired.
"Because"—she began, and hesitated—"because I don't want you always to be a brick-mason. It is dirty work. You can do better. Look at Harold. He is just a boy, and yet he is determined to be a minister like Mr. King. Ministers talk nice and look nice."
And as John lay in his bed afterward, trying to decide what to do, he suddenly said: "It is a go! I'll take the kid's advice. It is a toss-up, anyway. They may not keep me the week out, but the thing is worth trying for. Sam always said it was my line and others have said the same thing. Yes, I'll close with Pilcher & Reed in the morning. I'll hang up my hat in that office and try my hand at a new game for one week, anyway."
When he waked the next morning, however, he felt oppressed by a weighty sense of the things he had renounced forever. The new work he was about to undertake no longer charmed him. His entire outlook now seemed chaotic, futile. How could he go ahead—with any sort of heart—in this drab life among strangers, and leave forever behind him the memory of his ecstatic honeymoon with the sweet, pulsing mate of his choice? It simply could not be done. It was beyond mortal strength. He told himself that he had kept himself keyed up to the present point by continual change and rapid movement since leaving Tilly, but the ultimate test was on him. With a groan from a tight throat, and smothering another in his pillow, he told himself over and over that his career was ended. Tilly was free—there was comfort in that. With the news of his death in the wreck, she would bury him as widows have always buried their mates, and life for her would roll on, but she would remain alive to him as long as the breath came and went from his cheerless frame.
"Brother John!" It was Dora calling to him. "Are you awake?"
He started to answer, but his voice was clogged and he was afraid to trust it to utterance. She called again and then appeared fully dressed in the doorway, the primer in her hands. She approached his bedside. "Will you please tell me what this darned letter is? I can say them all, I think, down to it. What comes after O?"
"P," he answered. "Who taught you the others?"