United States -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction; Villages -- Fiction
"Gosh--I wish to God I was religious!" suddenly, contritely murmured
Billy Evans. In high heaven the angels, and in Billy's kitchen Grandma
Wentworth, overheard and smiled.
When Hank Lolly came up from the livery barn for a late breakfast, his
face drawn and eyes full of fear for the man and woman who had been
family and home to him, Billy went down the footpath to meet him.
"It's all right, Hank! He's here, red hair and all," Billy informed
him in the merest breath of a whisper. Hank wiped his face in limp
relief and sat down quite suddenly on the grass beside the path.
Instinctively Billy sat down with him.
They said nothing for a time, just looked and looked at the wide blue
sky, the green sweet world, tried for perhaps the millionth time to
sense Eternity and the what-and-why-and-how of it all and then gave it
up and like children accepted the day, the little new life, the whole
wonder of it as happy children accept it all, on faith and with
untainted joy. It was just good to be there and there was no doubting
the perfect May day. So they sat reverently until Billy, looking again
at that mass of shimmering greens and into those church-like aisles,
said:
"Hank, some one of us had ought to go to church to-day. I wish to God
I had kep' up going to Sunday school. Mother got me started but she
died before she could get me started in on church. So I never went.
It's a terrible thing for a man not to learn religion along with his
reading and writing and 'rithmetic. I used to think it was nobody's
business whether I had any religion or not after mother died. I knew
that where she was she'd understand. But I see now it was a terrible
mistake thinking that way and not laying in a supply of religion. A
man thinks he owns himself and that certain things are nobody's
business, but by-and-by along comes a wife or a red-headed baby and
things happen different from what you've ever expected, things that you
just got to have religion for, and gosh--what are you going to do then
if you ain't got any?"
This terrible situation being beyond the mental powers of Hank, that
soul just sat still until Billy puzzled a way out.
"Somebody'd ought to go to church from out this house to-day," went on
Billy in a low voice. "Grandma Wentworth can't go on account of Her
and It. I can't go because--gosh--I'm so kind of split, my head going
one way and my legs another, that as likely as not I'd wind up in the
blacksmith shop or the hotel or fall in the creek. I ain't safe on the
streets to-day, Hank. And, anyway, I've got to keep up fires and water
boiling and them dumb'd frogs under the willows from croaking so's She
can sleep to-night. That leaves nobody but you, Hank."
Billy hesitated, realizing the enormity of the request he was about to
make.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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