All He Knew(@@) by John Habberton (ebooks online reader TXT) 📕

of family affairs was not entirely respected by the Kimper family, for Sam soon heard remarks from street loafers, as he passed along, which indicated that the devotional exercises of the family had been reported, evidently by his own children, and he heard quotations from some of his weak and halting prayers pass from mouth to mouth and elicit peals of coarse laughter.

Nevertheless he found some encouragement. His son Tom was not quite so much of a cub at home as he had been, and actually took to trying, in a desultory way, to find work, although his father's offer to teach him the trade which had been learned in the penitentiary was declined very sharply and without any thanks whatever.

CHAPTER VII page 45

Billy, the younger boy, had an affectionate streak in his nature, which his father succeeded in touching to such an extent that complaints of Billy's truancy were nowhere near so numerous as they had been just after his father's return. Mary, the youngest daughter, was a less promising subject. Her precocity was of a very unpleasant order, and caused her father a great deal of annoyance.

When everything else failed him, Sam had the baby for consolation. The little wretch had been so utterly uncared for since its appearance that it seemed surprised for some time by its father's demonstrations of affection, but finally the meaning of this seemed made known to it, probably in the way the same meanings are translated to babies everywhere else, and from being a forlorn and fretful child it gradually became so cheerful that its own mother began to display some interest in it and make a plaything of it, to her own manifest advantage.

But Jane, the elder daughter, who was a woman in stature and already knew more of the world than is good for women in general, was a constant source of anxiety to Sam. Many a night the unhappy father lingered in the neighborhood of the hotel, seeking for an opportunity to see his daughter and talk with her; not that he had much to say, but that he hoped by his presence to keep more congenial company away from her. When he heard any village gossip in the house, he always could trace it to his daughter Jane. Whenever Mary broke out with some new and wild expression of longing, he understood who put it into her mind. Whenever his wife complained that she was not so well dressed as some other women whose husbands were plain workmen, and expressed a wish for some tawdry bit of finery, Sam could trace the desire, by very little questioning, back to his daughter Jane.

He prayed about it, thought about it, groaned over it, wept over it, and still saw no means within his power to bring the girl back to an interest in her family and to bring her up so that she should not disgrace the name which he was trying to rehabilitate. But the more thought and effort he gave to the subject, the less seemed his chance of success.

CHAPTER VIII.page 46

Eleanor Prency was the handsomest girl in all Bruceton. Indeed, she so far distanced all other girls in brilliancy and manners, as well as in good looks, that no other young woman thought of being jealous of her. Among her sex she occupied the position of a peerless horse or athlete among sporting men; she was "barred" whenever comparisons were made.

As she was an only child, she was especially dear to her parents, who had bestowed upon her every advantage which their means, intelligence, and social standing could supply, and she had availed herself of all of them apparently to the fullest extent. She was not lacking in affection, sense, self-control, and a number of virtues which some girls entirely satisfactory to their parents possessed in less measure.

Nevertheless the judge and his wife were deeply anxious about their daughter's future. She was good--as girls go; she attended regularly the church of which the family, including herself, were members; she had no bad habits or bad tastes; her associates were carefully selected; and yet the judge and his wife spent many hours, which should have been devoted to sleep, in endeavoring to forecast her future.

It was all a matter of heredity. At middle age the judge and his wife were fully deserving of the high esteem in which they were held by the entire community. They were an honest, honorable, Christian couple, living fully up to the professions they made. In their youthful days they had been different--in some respects. Well off, handsome, and brilliant, they had both been among the most persistent and successful of pleasure-seekers. Reviewing those days, Mrs. Prency could say that utter selfishness and self-love had been her deepest sins. Her husband, looking back at his own life, could truthfully say the same, but the details were different. He had looked upon the wine-cup and every other receptacle in which stimulants were ever served. He had tried every game of chance and gone through all other operations collectively known as "sowing one's wild oats." Respect for his wife caused him to break from all his bad habits and associations, at first haltingly and with many relapses, but afterwards by joining the church and conforming his life to his faith. But the inheritance of the child was from her parents, as they were, not as they afterwards became.

CHAPTER VIII.page 47

Therefore the couple became anxious anew when they discovered that their daughter had become very fond of Reynolds Bartram, for the young man forcibly reminded both of them of the judge himself in his early days, yet without Prency's strong and natural basis of character, while the daughter was entirely devoted to the pleasures of the day. If Bartram were to remain as he was, and his self-satisfaction to continue so strong as to be manifest upon all occasions and in all circumstances they foresaw a miserable life for their daughter. Hence Mrs. Prency's solicitude about young Bartram.

One day Mrs. Prency made a business excuse to call again on the cobbler's assistant.

"Mr. Kimper," said she after leaving a dainty boot with some instructions about repairs, "Reynolds Bartram came to see you, I suppose, as I warned you he would?"

"Yes, ma'am, he came," said the cobbler, selecting some buttons from a box and beginning to affix them to one of the lady's boots.

"Did he talk with you on the subject that I supposed he would."

"Yes," said Sam, "he did; quite a long time."

"Did you change your views at all under his arguments?"

"Oh, no, ma'am," said the man, looking up with an eager expression of countenance. "How could I?"

"I'm so glad," murmured the woman. "Well, what did he say?"

"I can't repeat all his words, Mrs. Prency, because he talks a good deal better than I do, you know, an' maybe I wouldn't give them the sense that they had,--the way that he meant them."

"How did he seem to take what you said to him?"

"I'm afraid, ma'am," said Sam, "that what I said didn't entirely suit him; because when I got through all he said was, 'Pshaw!'"

Mrs. Prency looked at the shoe through which the needle was rapidly passing back and forth, and finally said,--

CHAPTER VIII.page 48

"He hasn't come again, I suppose?"

"Oh, yes, ma'am, he has,--several times. I never knew any other man to be so much interested in the makin' of one pair of shoes as he has been about them that he ordered of me that day. He says they're not in any hurry, an' yet he comes in every day or two to talk about them."

"Indeed!" said Mrs. Prency, her face brightening. "Doesn't he talk of anything but his shoes?"

"Yes, ma'am," sighed Sam; "he comes back to the old subject always; an' it does seem to me as if the one thing he was thinkin' about an' tryin' to do was to break me down in what I've learned to believe. It don't seem, ma'am, to me that it's very big business for a smart feller like him to be in, when he knows what a common sort of a feller I am, an' what little I've got, an' how much I need all that I've got, if I'm goin' to keep straight any more."

"Mr. Kimper," said the lady, "try not to look at it in that way. He is not trying to break you down; he is trying to satisfy himself. Don't give way, and he dare not. If he did not believe a great deal of what you have been saying to him, he would not keep up his interest in it. Mr. Kimper, it may not seem possible to you, but there is a chance of your doing better work in the missionary cause for that young man than anybody and everybody else in this town has yet been able to do."

"Oh, nonsense, Mrs. Prency!" said the cobbler, dropping the shoe and looking up incredulously. "He's got a thousand times as much head-piece