Page:Elmer Gantry (1927).djvu/87

 Ingle, come all the way from St. Joe, where he was said to have a Sunday School of six hundred. As a young man—very thin and eloquent in a frock coat—Dr. Ingle had for six months preached in Paris, and Mrs. Gantry remembered him as her favorite minister. He had been so kind to her when she was ill; had come in to read "Ben Hur" aloud, and tell stories to a chunky little Elmer given to hiding behind furniture and heaving vegetables at visitors.

"Well, well, Brother, so this is the little tad I used to know as a shaver! Well, you always were a good little mannie, and they tell me that now you're a consecrated young man—that you're destined to do a great work for the Lord," Dr. Ingle greeted Elmer.

"Thank you, Doctor. Pray for me. It's an honor to have you come from your great church," said Elmer.

"Not a bit of trouble. On my way to Colorado—I've taken a cabin way up in the mountains there—glorious view—sunsets—painted by the Lord himself. My congregation have been so good as to give me two months' vacation. Wish you could pop up there for a while, Brother Elmer."

"I wish I could, Doctor, but I have to try in my humble way to keep the fires burning around here."

Mrs. Gantry was panting. To have her little boy discoursing with Dr. Ingle as though they were equals! To hear him talking like a preacher—just as natural! And some day—Elmer with a famous church; with a cottage in Colorado for the summer; married to a dear pious little woman, with half a dozen children; and herself invited to join them for the summer; all of them kneeling in family prayers, led by Elmer. . . though it was true Elmer declined to hold family prayers just now; said he'd had too much of it in seminary all year. . . too bad, but she'd keep on coaxing. . . and if he just would stop smoking, as she'd begged and besought him to do. . . well, perhaps if he didn't have a few naughtinesses left, he wouldn't hardly be her little boy any more. . . . How she'd had to scold once upon a time to get him to wash his hands and put on the nice red woolen wristlets she'd knitted for him!

No less satisfying to her was the way in which Elmer impressed all their neighbors. Charley Watley, the house-painter, commander of the Ezra P. Nickerson Post of the G. A. R. of Paris, who had always pulled his white mustache and grunted