no; one wants
you to get up bright and early, and another says sleep a plenty; one
will half-starve you, and the other says the thing is to feed you up."

At this point Uncle Martin rested his elbows against his sides, threw
his forearms outward and upward at an angle of forty-five degrees,
holding his broad palms toward the ceiling, while he dropped his heavy
shorn chin upon his breast and gazed impressively upon Millard from
under his eyebrows. The young man was rendered uneasy by this climactic
pause, and he thought to break the force of Uncle Martin's attitude by
changing the subject.

"Doctors differ among themselves as much as ministers do," he said.

"Ministers?" said Uncle Martin, erecting his head again, and sniffing a
little. "They are just after money nowadays. W'y, I joined the Baptist
church over here"--beckoning with his thumb--"when I came to New York,
and the minister never come a-nigh us. We are not fine enough, I
suppose. Ministers don't believe the plain Bible; they go on about a lot
of stuff that they get from somewheres else. I say take the plain Bible,
that a plain man like me can understand. I don't want the Greek and
Latin of it. Now the Bible says in one place that if a man's sick the
elders are to pray over him and anoint him with oil--I suppose it was
sweet oil; but I don't know--that they used. But did you ever know any
elder to do that? Naw; they just off for the doctor. Now, I say take the
plain word of God, that's set down so't you couldn't noways make any
mistakes."

Here Uncle Martin again dropped his head forward in a butting position,
and stared at Charley Millard from under his brows. This time the
younger man judged it best to make no rejoinder. Instead, he took the
little Tommy in his arms and began to stroke the cheeks of the nestling
child. The diversion had the proper effect. Uncle Martin, perceiving
that the results of his exhaustive meditations in medicine and theology,
which were as plain as the most self-evident nose on a man's face, were
not estimated at their par value, got up and explained that he must go
to Greenpoint and call on a man who had lately lost a child; and then,
fearing he wouldn't get back to supper, he said good-by, and come again,
and always glad to see you, Charley, and good luck to you; and so made
his way down the dingy stairs.

Charley Millard now turned to his aunt, a thin-faced woman whose rather
high forehead, wide and delicately formed in the