One day Mrs. Prency made a business excuse to call again on the cobbler’s assistant.

“Mr. Kimper,” said she after leaving a dainty boot with some instructions about repairs, “Reynolds Bartram came to see you, I suppose, as I warned you he would?”

“Yes, ma’am, he came,” said the cobbler, selecting some buttons from a box and beginning to affix them to one of the lady’s boots.

“Did he talk with you on the subject that I supposed he would.”

“Yes,” said Sam, “he did; quite a long time.”

“Did you change your views at all under his arguments?”

“Oh, no, ma’am,” said the man, looking up with an eager expression of countenance.  “How could I?”

“I’m so glad,” murmured the woman.  “Well, what did he say?”

“I can’t repeat all his words, Mrs. Prency, because he talks a good deal better than I do, you know, an’ maybe I wouldn’t give them the sense that they had,—­the way that he meant them.”

“How did he seem to take what you said to him?”

“I’m afraid, ma’am,” said Sam, “that what I said didn’t entirely suit him; because when I got through all he said was, ‘Pshaw!’”

Mrs. Prency looked at the shoe through which the needle was rapidly passing back and forth, and finally said,—­

“He hasn’t come again, I suppose?”

“Oh, yes, ma’am, he has,—­several times.  I never knew any other man to be so much interested in the makin’ of one pair of shoes as he has been about them that he ordered of me that day.  He says they’re not in any hurry, an’ yet he comes in every day or two to talk about them.”

“Indeed!” said Mrs. Prency, her face brightening.  “Doesn’t he talk of anything but his shoes?”

“Yes, ma’am,” sighed Sam; “he comes back to the old subject always; an’ it does seem to me as if the one thing he was thinkin’ about an’ tryin’ to do was to break me down in what I’ve learned to believe.  It don’t seem, ma’am, to me that it’s very big business for a smart feller like him to be in, when he knows what a common sort of a feller I am, an’ what little I’ve got, an’ how much I need all that I’ve got, if I’m goin’ to keep straight any more.”

“Mr. Kimper,” said the lady, “try not to look at it in that way.  He is not trying to break you down; he is trying to satisfy himself.  Don’t give way, and he dare not.  If he did not believe a great deal of what you have been saying to him, he would not keep up his interest in it.  Mr. Kimper, it may not seem possible to you, but there is a chance of your doing better work in the missionary cause for that young man than anybody and everybody else in this town has yet been able to do.”

“Oh, nonsense, Mrs. Prency!” said the cobbler, dropping the shoe and looking up incredulously.  “He’s got a thousand times as much head-piece as I have, an’ if he can’t learn what he wants to from other people there ain’t the slightest likelihood of my ever learnin’ him anythin’.”