“All last winter he had quite a class to teach singing in the evening and three day-scholars for the violin, one of whom paid him in hams.  Another offered to pay either in money or a beautiful portrait of me in pastel.  We needed money, but Clayton chose the portrait as a surprise to me.  At times he seems unpractical, but now he has started out in business again—­”

There were bitter shakings of the head here.  Business!  Standing in a buggy at street-corners, jauntily urging a crowd to buy the magic grease-eradicator, toothache remedy, meretricious jewelry, what not! first playing a fiddle and rollicking out some ribald song to fetch them.  Business indeed!  A pretty business!

“The boys are delighted with the Bibles you sent and learn a verse each day.  I have told them they may some day preach as you did if they will be as good men as you are and study the Bible.  They try to preach like our preacher in the cunningest way.  I wish you could see them.  You would love them in spite of your feeling against their father.  I did what you suggested to stimulate their minds about the Scriptures, but perhaps the lesson they chose to write about was not very edifying.  It does not seem a pretty lesson to me, and I did not pick it out.  They heard about it at Sabbath-school and had their papers all written as a surprise for me.  Of course, Bernal’s is very childish, but I think Allan’s paper, for a child of his age, shows a grasp of religious matters that is truly remarkable.  I shall keep them studying the Bible daily.  I should tell you that I am now looking forward with great joy to—­”

With a long sigh he laid down the finely written sheet and took from the sheaf the two papers she had spoken of.  Then while the gale roared without and shook his window, and while the bust of John Calvin looked down at him from the book-case at his back, he followed his two grandsons on their first incursion into the domain of speculative theology.

He took first the paper of the older boy, painfully elaborated with heavy, intricate capitals and headed “Elisha and the Wicked Children—­by Mr. Allan Delcher Linford, Esquire, aged nine years and six months.”

* * * * *

“This lesson,” it began, “is to teach us to love God and the prophets or else we will likely get into trouble.  It says Elisha went up from Bethel and some children came out of the city and said go up thou Baldhead.  They said it Twice one after the other and so Elisha got mad right away and turned around and cursed them good in the name of the Lord and so 2 She Bears come along and et up 42 of them for Elisha was a holy prophet of God and had not ought to of been yelled at.  So of course the mothers would Take on very much When they found their 42 Children et up but I think that we had ought to learn from this that these 42 Little ones was not the Elected.  It says in our catchism God having out of his mere good pleasure elected some to everlasting life.  Now God being a Presbiterian would know these 42 little ones had not been elected so they might as well be et up by bears as anything else to show forth his honour and glory Forever Amen.  It should teach a Boy to be mighty carful about kidding old men unless he is a Presbiterian.  I spelled every word in this right.