Tip Lewis and His Lamp Part 26

"And the whole of it is, you think it's my duty to let him come, and try to save, him! Suppose I should, what would you do for your share?"

"I'd try, too."

"How?"

"Why, I'd try to get him to do right."

"Suppose he should try to get you to do wrong?"

"He couldn't!" said Edward positively.

"How did you find that out?"

"Because I should pray for myself every day, and for Bob too; and G.o.d hears prayer."

"Yes, but G.o.d's people sometimes get very far away from Him; if this Bob should lead _you_ astray, I'd be sorry I ever heard of him."

"I don't feel much afraid," Edward said, speaking this time in a more quiet, less positive tone, "for I never go wrong when I pray often; pray about everything that comes up, you know, and mean what I pray for."

"Humph!" said Mr. Minturn; "that's a good idea; I guess you're pretty safe under _that_ rule."

"Besides," said Edward, reserving one of his best arguments till the last, "I know somebody who would help Bob ever so much,--Mr. Ray would find him out."

Mr. Minturn's eyes grew bright, and he smiled a half sad smile.

"Yes," he said, "that's true enough; Ray can't come near anybody without helping him. Well, write to the boy to come on; we'll try him. Has he anything to come with?"

"Yes, sir, he says he has money enough to get here." And Edward went away glad, for he had begun to be very willing to have Bob there.

CHAPTER XXV.

"If ye abide in Me, and My word abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you."

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 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 G.o.d 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 has heard my voice and my supplications.'"

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 Bay 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 Sabbath 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 honoured 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?" Bay 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 to-night," 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 to-night 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 now-a-days, just because you board in a big house and dress like a dandy."