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,--

"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 el