For Andrew, whom both father and mother judged the dreamiest of mortals, was in reality the most practical being in the whole parish--so practical that by and by people mocked him for a poet and a heretic, because he did the things which they said they believed. Most unpractical must every man appear who genuinely believes in the things that are unseen. The man called practical by the men of this world is he who busies himself building his house on the sand, while he does not even bespeak a lodging in the inevitable beyond. “What are we to do?” said Andrew. “If the Lord is going about like that, looking after us, we've surely got something to do looking after _Him!_” There was no help in Sandy; and it was well that, with the reticence of children, neither thought of laying the case before their parents; the traditions of the elders would have ill agreed with the doctrine they were now under! Suddenly it came into Andrew's mind that the book they read at _worship_ to which he had never listened, told all about Jesus. He began at the beginning, and grew so interested in the stories that he forgot why he had begun to read it One day, however, as he was telling Sandy about Jacob--“What a shame!” said Sandy; and Andrew's mind suddenly opened to the fact that he had got nothing yet out of the book. He threw it from him, echoing Sandy's words, “What's a shame!”--not of Jacob's behavior, but of the Bible's, which had all this time told them nothing about the man that was going up and down the world, gathering up their sins, and carrying them away in His pack! But it dawned upon him that it was the New Testament that told about Jesus Christ, and they turned to that. Here also I say it was well they asked no advice, for they would probably have been directed to the Epistle to the Romans, with explanations yet more foreign to the heart of Paul than false to his Greek. They began to read the story of Jesus as told by his friend Matthew, and when they had ended it, went on to the gospel according to Mark. But they had not read far when Sandy cried out: “Eh, Andrew, it's a' the same thing ower again!” “No a'thegither,” answered Andrew. “We'll gang on, and see!” Andrew came to the conclusion that it was so far the same that he would rather go back and read the other again, for the sake of some particular things he wanted to make sure about So the second time they read St. Matthew, and came to these words: “If two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of My Father which is in heaven.” “There's twa o' 's here!” cried Andrew, laying down the book. “Lat's try 't!” “Try what?” said Sandy. His brother read the passage again. “Lat the twa o' 's speir Him for something!” concluded Andrew. “What wull't be?” “I won'er if it means only ance, or may be three times, like 'The Three Wishes!'” suggested Sandy, who, like most Christians, would rather have a talk about it than do what he was told.