“No,” the boy relucted. “Benny says the New Jerusalem will be a good deal like the circus. That's the reason he coaxed his father to let him go. Is Philadelphy as far as Wheeling?”
“A good deal further, from what I've heard tell,” his mother said; she smiled at his innocently sinuous approach to his desire.
He broke out with it. “Mother, what's the reason I can't go with Benny, and Mr. Hingston, and the Little Flock? They'd take good care of me, and I wouldn't make Mr. Hingston any trouble. Me 'n' Benny could sleep together. And the Good Old Man he's always been very pleasant to me. Patted my head oncet, and ast me what my name was.”
“Did you tell him it was Billings?” his mother asked uneasily.
“No, just Joseph; and he said, well, that was his name, too. Don't you think the Good Old Man is good?”
“We're none of us as good as we ought to be, Joey. No, he ain't a good man, I'm afraid.”
“My!” the boy said, and then after a moment: “I don't want to go, Mother, unless you want to let me go.”
His mother did not speak for a while, and it seemed as if she were not going to speak at all, so that the boy said, with a little sigh of renunciation, “I didn't expect you would. But I'd be as careful! And even if the Good Old Man ain't so very good, Mr. Hingston is, and he wouldn't let anything happen to me.”
The woman put her hand under the boy's chin, and looked into his eager eyes which had not ceased their pleading. At last she said, “You can go, Joey!”
“Mother!” He jumped to his feet from his crouching at hers. “Oh, glory to God!”