Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/174

 "Yes, he is pagan!" sighed the mother.

"And always will be," added the Preacher, remembering certain shrugs and gestures with which Lonely had resented a late attempt at timely guidance and advice.

"I would give a great deal to know what will grow in that weed-garden of idleness twenty years from now!" said the Preacher's wife. And she sighed again.

"He 's so like a wild animal,—as soon as he sees a door close on him he starts to fret and fidget," she went on.

"Yes, and his barbarian young soul hates restraint just the same as his barbarian young body!" added the man of the cloth. Only that morning Mrs. Sampson and Lonely had been closeted together in the sewing-room; there she had made a patient and serious effort to get somewhere near the heart of the abashed boy. Yet when any approach was made to the matter of his general morality and the higher life of the spirit. Lonely only squirmed and squinted, or hunched up one shoulder and listened meekly to the end. So Mrs. Sampson had been forced to go back to the original object of the conversation, the unsatisfactory