The Bishop of Cottontown Part 29

"'Do you still hold to that offer?' he axed.

"'I'll make bond with my daddy-in-law on it,' I said.

"'Nuff said,' an' Jud was gone. The next day he came back leading the black, slicker an' hence no-counter than ever, if possible.

"'Look at him,' he said proudly--'a dead match for yourn. Jes' han'

me that two an' a half an' take him. You now have a team worth a thousan'.'

"I looked the hoss over plum' surprised like.

"'Why, Jud,' I said as softly as I cu'd, for I was nigh to bustin', an' I had a lot of friends come to see the sho', an' they standin'

'round stickin' their old hats in their mouths to keep from explodin'--'Why, Jud, my dear friend,' I said, 'ain't you kind o'

mistaken about this? I said a _match_ for the black, an' it peers to me like you've gone an' bought the black hisse'f an' is tryin' to put him off on me. No--no--my kind frien', you'll not fin' anything no-count enuff to be his match on this terrestrial ball.'

"By this time you cu'd have raked Jud's eyes off his face with a soap-gourd.

"'What? w-h-a-t? He--why--I bought him of Dr. Sykes.'

"'Why, that's funny,' I said, 'but it comes in handy all round. If you'd told me that the other day I might have told you,' I said--'yes, I might have, but I doubt it--that I'd loaned him to Dr.

Sykes an' told him whenever you offered him two hundred cash for him to let him go. Jes' keep him,' sez I, 'till you find his mate, an'

I'll take an oath to buy 'em.'"

Bud slapped his leg an' yelled with delight.

"Whew," said the Bishop--"not so loud. We're at the church.

"But remember, Bud, it's good policy allers to freeze. When you're in doubt--freeze!"

CHAPTER V

THE FLOCK

The Bishop's flock consisted of two distinct cla.s.ses: Cottontowners and Hillites.

"There's only a fair sprinklin' of Hillites that lives nigh about here," said the Bishop, "an' they come because it suits them better than the high f'lutin' services in town. When a Christian gits into a church that's over his head, he is soon food for devil-fish."

The line of demarcation, even in the Bishop's small flock, was easily seen. The Hillites, though lean and lanky, were swarthy, healthy and full of life. "But Cottontown," said the Bishop, as he looked down on his congregation--"Cottontown jes' naturally feels tired."

It was true. Years in the factory had made them dead, listless, soulless and ambitionless creatures. To look into their faces was like looking into the cracked and muddy bottom of a stream which once ran.

Their children were there also--little tots, many of them, who worked in the factory because no man nor woman in all the State cared enough for them to make a fight for their childhood.

They were children only in age. Their little forms were not the forms of children, but of diminutive men and women, on whose backs the burden of earning their living had been laid, ere the frames had acquired the strength to bear it.

Stunted in mind and body, they were little solemn, pygmy peoples, whom poverty and overwork had canned up and compressed into concentrated extracts of humanity. The flavor--the juices of childhood--had been pressed out.

"'N no wonder," thought the Bishop, as he looked down upon them from his crude platform, "for them little things works six days every week in the factory from sun-up till dark, an' often into the night, with jes' forty minutes at noon to bolt their food. O G.o.d," he said softly to himself, "You who caused a stream of water to spring up in the wilderness that the life of an Ishmaelite might be saved, make a stream of sentiment to flow from the heart of the world to save these little folks."

Miss Patsy b.u.t.ts, whose father, Elder b.u.t.ts of the Hard-sh.e.l.l faith, owned a fertile little valley farm beyond the mountain, was organist.

She was fat and so red-faced that at times she seemed to be oiled.

She was painfully frank and suffered from acute earnestness.

And now, being marriageable, she looked always about her with shy, quick, expectant glances.

The other object in life, to Patsy, was to watch her younger brother, Archie B., and see that he kept out of mischief. And perhaps the commonest remark of her life was:

"Maw, jus' look at Archie B.!"

This was a great cross for Archie B., who had been known to say concerning it: "If I ever has any kids, I'll never let the old'uns nuss the young'uns. They gits into a bossin' kind of a habit that sticks to 'em all they lives."

To-day Miss Patsy was radiantly shy and happy, caused by the fact that her fat, honest feet were encased in a pair of beautiful new shoes, the uppers of which were clasped so tightly over her ankles as to cause the fat members to bulge in creases over the tops, as uncomfortable as two Sancho Panzas in armor.

"Side-but'ners," said Mrs. b.u.t.ts triumphantly to Mrs. O'Hooligan of Cottontown,--"side-but'ners--I got 'em for her yistiddy--the fust that this town's ever seed. La, but it was a job gittin' 'em on Patsy. I had to soak her legs in cold water nearly all night, an'

then I broke every knittin' needle in the house abut'nin' them side but'ners.

"But fas.h.i.+on is fas.h.i.+on, an' when I send my gal out into society, I'll send her in style. Patsy b.u.t.ts," she whispered so loud that everybody on her side of the house heard her--"when you starts up that ole wheez-in' one gallus organ, go slow or you'll bust them side-but'ners wide open."

When the Bishop came forward to preach his sermon, or talk to his flock, as he called it, his surplice would have astonished anyone, except those who had seen him thus attired so often. A stranger might have laughed, but he would not have laughed long--the old man's earnestness, sincerity, reverence and devotion were over-shadowing.

Its pathos was too deep for fun.

Instead of a clergyman's frock he wore a faded coat of blue b.u.t.toned up to his neck. It had been the coat of an officer in the artillery, and had evidently pa.s.sed through the Civil War. There was a bullet hole in the shoulder and a sabre cut in the sleeve.

CHAPTER VI

A BISHOP MILITANT

No one had ever heard the Bishop explain his curious surplice but once, and that had been several years before, when the little chapel, by the aid of a concert Miss Alice gave, contributions from the Excelsior Mill headed by Mr. and Mrs. Kingsley, and other sources had been furnished, and the Bishop came forward to make his first talk:

"This is the only church of its kind in the worl', I reckin'," he said. "I've figured it out an' find we're made up of Baptis', Metherdis', Presbyterian, 'Piscopalian, Cam'elites an' Hard-sh.e.l.ls.

You've 'lected me Bishop, I reckon, 'cause I've jined all of 'em, an'

so far as I know I am the only man in the worl' who ever done that an' lived to tell the tale. An' I'm not ashamed to say it, for I've allers foun' somethin' in each one of 'em that's a little better than somethin' in the other. An' if there's any other church that'll teach me somethin' new about Jesus Christ, that puffect Man, I'll jine it.

I've never seed a church that had Him in it that wa'n't good enough for me."

The old man smiled in humorous retrospection as he went on:

"The first company of Christians I jined was the Hard-sh.e.l.ls. I was young an' a raw recruit an' nachully fell into the awkward squad. I liked their solar plexus way of goin' at the Devil, an' I liked the way they'd allers deal out a good ration of whiskey, after the fight, to ev'ry true soldier of the Cross--especially if we got our feet too wet, which we mos' always of'ntimes gen'ally did."

This brought out visible smiles all down the line, from the others at the Hard-sh.e.l.ls and their custom of foot-was.h.i.+ng.

"But somehow," went on the old man, "I didn't grow in grace--spent too much time in singin' an' takin' toddies to keep off the effect of cold from wet feet. Good company, but I wanted to go higher, so I drapt into the Baptis' rigiment, brave an' hones', but they spen' too much time a-campin' in the valley of the still water, an' when on the march, instid of buildin' bridges to cross dry-shod over rivers an'