, but I don't see much law laying around loose. Anyway," he went
on, "I couldn't afford to read law, and not be getting any wages. I have
to earn money, you know."

Theron felt that he liked the boy. "Yes," he said, with a kindly tone;
"I've heard that you are a good, industrious youngster. I daresay Mr.
Gorringe will see to it that you get a chance to read law, and get wages
too."

"Oh, I can read all there is here and welcome," the boy explained,
stepping toward the window to decipher the label on a bundle of roots
in his hand, "but that's no good unless there's regular practice coming
into the office all the while. THAT'S how you learn to be a lawyer. But
Gorringe don't have what I call a practice at all. He just sees men in
the other room there, with the door shut, and whatever there is to do he
does it all himself."

The minister remembered a stray hint somewhere that Mr. Gorringe was
a money-lender--what was colloquially called a "note-shaver." To his
rustic sense, there was something not quite nice about that occupation.
It would be indecorous, he felt, to encourage further talk about it from
the boy.

"What are you doing there?" he inquired, to change the subject.

"Sorting out some plants," replied Harvey. "I don't know what's got
into Gorringe lately. This is the third big box he's had since I've been
here--that is, in six weeks--besides two baskets full of rose-bushes.
I don't know what he does with them. He carries them off himself
somewhere. I've had kind of half a notion that he's figurin' on getting
married. I can't think of anything else that would make a man spend
money like water--just for flowers and bushes. They do get foolish, you
know, when they've got marriage on the brain."

Theron found himself only imperfectly following the theories of the
young philosopher. It was his fact that monopolized the minister's
attention.

"But as I understand it," he remarked hesitatingly, "Brother
Gorringe--or rather Mr. Gorringe--gets all the plants he wants,
everything he likes, from a big garden somewhere outside. I don't
know that it is exactly his; but I remember hearing something to that
effect."

The boy slapped the last litter off his hands, and, as he came to the
window, shook his head. "These don't come from no garden outside," he
declared. "They come from the dealers', and he pays solid cash for 'em.
The invoice for this lot alone was thirty-one dollars and sixty cents.
There it is on the tabl