Chapter 25

Edward got up one morning feeling years older than he had only the morning before—older and graver, feeling a great responsibility resting on his shoulders; for he was fatherless! The weary frame, racked with so many pains, was at last at rest. Kitty had written just a line, telling the sad story, but it did not reach him until nearly a week after; and with it came Mr. Holbrook’s—a long letter, full of tender sympathy, telling all about how, in the afternoon of an early spring day, they had laid his father by Johnny’s side.

Edward read on eagerly, until he came to this sentence: “My dear boy, I have a most precious message for you. I was with him only an hour before he died, and at that time he said to me, ‘I want you to tell Tip that God has heard his prayer, and saved his father; and that I shall watch for him to come to heaven, and bring all the rest.’ And, Edward, I haven’t a shade of doubt but that your father is with his Redeemer; you must let me quote again a verse which I once gave you: ‘I love the LORD, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications.’* (Psalm 116:1) ”

And at this point the letter dropped from his hand, and Edward shed his first tears for his father.

It was curious, the different ways that Mr. Minturn and his son had of expressing sympathy.

“Oh,” Mr. Minturn said, when he was told, “why in the world didn’t they send for you?”

“Because, sir, my father died very suddenly, and my mother thought I could not afford to come so far for the funeral.”

“Afford! as if that would have made any difference. Did they think I would let it cost you anything?”

Edward showed Mr. Holbrook’s letter to Ray after that; and when it had been read, expressed the feeling which had been much in his heart ever since the news came, and which had been strengthened by Mr. Monturn’s words:

“I shall always be sorry that I could not have gone to the funeral.”

And Ray answered, resting his arm, as he spoke, lightly on Edward’s shoulder, to express the tenderness which he felt, “No you won’t, my dear fellow; when you get up there, in the glory of the Redeemer’s presence, and meet your father face to face, you will not remember to be sorry that you did not see him buried.”

Meantime Bob had come, and been set at work. He did not board at Mr. Minturn’s. Edward had heard that matter arranged with a little sigh of relief; his precious hour with Ray, then, would be undisturbed.

Bob was doing very much better than anybody who knew him would have imagined he could do; he seemed to have made up his mind to behave himself, sure enough. Yet his being there was a trial to Edward in several ways: he had a great horror of being called “Tip”; that name belonged to the miserable, ragged, friendless, hopeless boy who used to wander around the streets in search of mischief, not to the young man who was a faithful clerk in one of the finest stores in Albany, besides being a teacher in Sunday school, and a very fair scholar in Latin and algebra. But Bob Turner could not be made to understand all this; and though he stared at the neat black suit which Edward wore, and opened his eyes wide when Mr. Minturn went and came in company with his old companion, and honored him in many ways, he still called him “Tip,” in clear, round tones, that rang through the store a dozen times a day. But there was nothing which Ray could not smooth over, so Edward thought, when one evening he flounced into the library with a very much disturbed face.

“I wish that fellow knew anything,” he said angrily.

“What is the matter now?” Ray asked, meeting the bright, angry eyes with a quiet smile.

Edward laughed a little. “Well, I can’t help feeling vexed; Bob screeches that hateful little name after me wherever I go. I despise that name, and I wish he could be made to understand it.”

“How did you happen to be called Tip at first?”

“Why,” said Edward, turning over the leaves of his dictionary, “my little sister Kitty made it up before she could talk plain. How she ever got that name out of Edward, I don’t know; I’m sure I wish she had been asleep when she did it; but that’s what she called me, and that’s what I’ve been ever since.”

“And did Johnny, the little boy that died, ever call you so?”

Edward’s eyes began to grow soft.

“Often,” he said gently; “and it was about the only name he could speak; he was a little fellow.”

“Well, Edward, I should not think it would be such a very disagreeable name to you, when your father, who is gone, always used it, and always in kindness, you told me; and it is the only name by which little Johnny can remember you. There are two things to be thought of in this matter,” Ray continued, after a moment, finding Edward not disposed to speak: “one is, if you hope to do anything with this old companion of yours, you must be ready to take worse things from him than a quiet, inoffensive little name like that; he will learn your right name, perhaps, in time. And the other is—What is Bob Turner’s right name, my friend?”

Edward’s face flushed, his lips quivered into a little smile, then he laughed outright.

“It would be ridiculous to call him Robert!” he said, still laughing. “Ray, here’s my exercise, if you want it now.”

And Ray heard no more complaints about the offending little name.

“Say, Tip, just go home with me tonight,” Bob coaxed one evening, as Edward, having been detained late at the store, was leaving just as Bob was closing the shutters. “Mr. Ray’s head is so bad you won’t have any plaguy lessons tonight to hinder you. Every single fellow in the store but me is going to the theatre, and I am awful lonesome up there alone.”

“It is a wonder you are not going, too,” said Edward.

“No, it ain’t. I can keep a promise once in a while, I reckon. That Ray Minturn can do anything with a fellow, and I was fool enough to promise him that I wouldn’t go. Come, go up home with me; do, that’s a good fellow!”

“No,” said Edward decidedly, “I can’t.”

“Now, Tip Lewis, I think you’re real mean; you don’t never come to see me no more than if I was in Guinea. You act as if you were ashamed of me, and I keep my word and behave myself, too; and you’re a mean, chicken-hearted fellow, if you’re ashamed to notice me nowadays, just because you board in a big house and dress like a dandy.”

“Poh!” said Edward; “what nonsense that is! I’d look well being ashamed of anyone that Minturn talked with. But, Bob, I can’t go tonight, nor any other night just about this time; because I made a promise that I’d do something else, at exactly half-past eight, and that nothing in the world should hinder me if I could help it; and it can’t be far from half-past eight now.”

Bob eyed him curiously. “Tip, you’re the oddest fellow born, I do believe,” he said at last “Is it lessons?”

“No, it’s nothing about lessons.”

“Couldn’t I help you to do it?”

“Yes,” said Edward, after a thoughtful silence; “you could help me better than any one else, only you won’t.”

“Well, now,” Bob answered earnestly, “as sure as I’m alive, I will, if you’ll tell me what it is; I’ll help you this very night.”

“Do you promise?” asked Edward.

“Yes, I do, out and out; and when I promise a thing through and through, why, you know, Tip Lewis, that I do it.”

“Well,” said Edward, as he tried the door to see that all was safe before leaving, “then I’ll tell you. Every night, at exactly half-past eight, I go to my room and ask God over and over again to make you want to be a Christian.”

Not a single word did Bob answer to this; he took long strides up the street by the side of Edward in the direction of Mr. Mintern’s, never once speaking until they had reached the door, and stood waiting to be let in; then he said, “Tip, that’s mean.”

“What is?”

“To get a fellow to promise what he can’t do.”

“I have not. Don’t you want to be a Christian?”

“No; I can’t say that I’m particular about it.”

“But that’s too silly to believe. You need a friend to help you about as badly as any one I know of, and when you can have one for the asking, why shouldn’t you want Him? Besides, I didn’t say make you a Christian, anyhow; I said make you want to be one. You can pray, that I’m sure; any way, you promised, and I trusted you.”

Bob followed him through the hall, up the stairs, to his neat little room, and whistled “Hail, Columbia,” while he lighted a match and turned on the gas.

“My! you have things in style here, don’t you?” he said, looking around, while the bright light gleamed over the pretty carpet and shining furniture.

“Yes,” said Edward; “everything in this house is in style. Bob, it’s half-past eight.”

“Well,” Bob said good-naturedly, “I’d like to know what I’m to do; this is new business to me, you see.”

“I’m going to kneel down here and pray for you, and you promised to do the same.”

Edward knelt at his bedside, and Bob, half laughing, followed his example. But Christ must have been praying too, and putting words into Edward’s heart to say. By and by, in spite of himself, Bob had to put up his hand and dash away a tear or two. He had never heard himself prayed for before.

That evening was one to be remembered by Bob Turner, for more than one reason. Ray sent for both of the boys to come to his room; he was sick, but not too sick to see and talk with Bob whenever he could get a chance. He made the half-hour spent with him so pleasant, that Bob gave an eager assent to the request that he would come often. More than that, he kept his word; and as often as he passed Edward’s door, towards nine o’clock, he stepped lightly, for he knew that he was being prayed for, and there began to come into his heart a strange longing to pray for himself. One evening he discovered that Ray, too, prayed every night for him, and the vague notion grew into a certainty, that what they two were so anxious about for him, he ought to desire for himself.

“Ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.”

Edward had taken this promise into his heart; he was trying to live up to the condition to abide in Christ, and in due season God made His promise sure.

“I wish,” Bob said to Ray one evening when the weary head was full of pain—“I do wish I could do something for you.”

“You can,” Ray answered quickly—“something that I would like better than almost anything else in the world.”

“What is it?” Bob’s question was sincere and eager.

“Give yourself to Christ.”

Bob heard this in grave, earnest silence.

“I would,” he said after a minute, “if I knew how.”

“Do you mean that?”

“Yes, I do; I’m sick of waiting, and I’m sick of myself.”

“If I should tell you how, would you do it?”

“Yes, I would,” spoken evidently with honest meaning.

“Kneel down, then, here beside me, and say to God that you want to be a Christian; that you are willing to give yourself up to Him now and for ever, to do just as He tells you.”

Bob hesitated, struggling a little, and at last knelt down. There was silence in the room, while three sincere hearts were lifted up in prayer; and surely Christ bent low to listen.

When Bob would have risen, Ray laid one hand on his arm, and, steadying his throbbing head with the other, said solemnly, “Blessed Redeemer, here is a soul given up to Thee. Do Thou take it, and wash it in Thy precious blood, and make it fit for heaven. We ask boldly, because Thou hast promised, and we know that Thy promises are sure.”

“Edward,” Ray said the next evening, as they sat alone, and were silent for a little, after Bob had left them, and gone home rejoicing in the hope of sins washed away, “what was that verse that your minister at home quoted for you in his letter?”

“ ‘I love the LORD, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications,’ ” Edward repeated it with brightening eyes.