"
"Gettin' a little excited, ain't ye?" smiled Uncle Bobbie, though there
was a tear twinkling in his sharp old eyes.
"Yes I am," retorted the other. "It's enough to excite anyone who has
a heart to feel and eyes to see the misery in this old world, and then
to be asked eternally, 'Why don't you go to church?' Why look at 'em;
they even let their own preachers starve when they get too old to work.
Societies and lodges don't do that. I don't mean to step on your toes
though," he added hastily. "You know that, Uncle Bobbie. You've proven
yourself a Christian to me in ways I'll never forget. My old mother
was a member of the church and they let her go hungry, when I was too
little to take care of her; and if it hadn't been for you she would
have died then. But you fed her, and if there's a Heaven, she's there,
and you'll be there too. But what makes me mad is, that these fellows
who _never_ do anything, are just as sure of it as you who do so much."
"Ah, George," said Wicks; "that help I give your maw warn't nothin'.
Do you think I'd see her suffer? Why, I knowed her when she was a
girl."
"I know, Uncle Bobbie, but that isn't the question. Why, don't the
church _do_ some of the things they are always talking about?"
"Do infidels do any more?" asked Mr. Wicks.
"No, they don't," answered George, "but they don't thank God that Jesus
Christ was crucified, so that they might get to Heaven, either."
"Thar's one fellow that I didn't feed," said the old man, after a long
pause.
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