id. I'd ask you to begin it
now, Master Joseph, weren't it that the Master is waiting for us over
yonder in my house. And from what Philip tells me you would have my
advice about joining our community, Master Joseph. You've seen no doubt
a good deal of the Temple at Jerusalem and know everything about the
goings on there, and are with us in this--that the Lord don't want no
more fat rams and goats and bullocks, and incense is hateful in his
nostrils. So I've heard. They be Isaiah's words, aren't they, young
Master? But there's no master here, only Jesus: he is Master, and if I
call you "Master" it is from habit of beforetimes. But no offence
intended. You always will be master for me, and I'll be servant always
in a sense, which won't prevent us from being brothers. The Master
yonder will understand and will explain it all to you better than I....
And Peter nodded his great head covered with frizzly hair. But, Peter, I
am a rich man, and my father is too, and none but the poor is admitted
into the Community of Jesus. That's what affrights him, Peter--his
money, Philip interjected, and I have been trying to make him understand
that Jesus won't ask him for his father's money, he not having it to
give away. I'm not so sure of that, Peter said. The Master told us a
story yesterday of a steward who took his master's money and gave it to
the poor, he being frightened lest the poor, whom he hadn't been
over-good to in his lifetime, might not let him into heaven when he
died. And the Master seemed to think that he did well, for he said: it
is well to bank with the poor. Them were his very words. So it seems to
thee, Peter, that I should take my father's money? Joseph asked. Take
your father's money! Peter answered. We wouldn't wrong your father out
of the price of two perch, and never have done, neither myself nor John
and James. Now I won't say as much for---- We love your father, and
never do we forget that when our nets were washed away it was he that
gave us new ones. I am sure thou wouldst not wrong my father, Joseph
answered, and he refrained from asking Peter to explain the relevancy of
the story he had just told lest he should entangle him. It is better, he
said to himself, to keep to facts, and he told Peter that even his own
money was not altogether his own money, for he had a partner in Jericho
and it would be hard to take his money out of the business and give it
all to the poor. Giving it to the poor in Galilee, he s