ck
curtains, neither. So just you keep out of that there poolroom or I'll
take you over to Doc Mitchell's and have every one of them there
crooked teeth of yourn straightened out."

"All right, Mr. Lolly, I'll do just as you say and go to church. It
ain't as hard as it sounds, that ain't. Because, honest, Hank, ain't
that there minister a fine guy? He's as good, I believe, as Billy. He
asked me to come on and be in his Sunday-school class and get in on
some fun. And he says to wait until he gets his barn fixed; that he'll
show us boys something. And I bet he will. Why, say, Hank, maybe he
kin do all sorts of circus stunts. You know he's from India and that's
where all the snake charmers and sword swallowers come from, ain't it?"

In this perfectly simple and artless fashion Cynthia's son went about
the creation of his own special Sunday-school class and when he got
through the result was startling. It was the largest and somebody said
the weirdest Sunday-school class ever seen in Green Valley. Indeed,
when Mr. James D. Austin, who was about the most respectable man in
town, saw it he grew quite distressed and suddenly very tired.

He had tried, since the age of ten when he had formally and publicly
joined the church on the very crest of a great religious wave, to do
his part towards making and keeping the Green Valley church on a high
spiritual plane. He felt at times that he was close to success and now
here from the very ends of the earth came a boy to upset all his plans.

So Mr. Austin suddenly felt ill and old and he went to see Doc Philipps
about a tonic. Doc Philipps, who could have been as good a lawyer as
he was a doctor, asked a few questions about politics, religion and
Mrs. Austin's lumbago and knew exactly what was the matter with James
D. Austin. The next time he ran across Cynthia's son he hailed him.

"Look here, Knight, what you been doing to James D. lately?
Been turning his nice little church all upside down, ain't
you? Driven him right into a fearful case of grouch and an
I-am-through-with-the-things-of-this-world attack, that's what you
have."

Cynthia's son looked very soberly and very directly at his friend the
doctor and turned on his heel.

"Doc, I'm going to see that poor man right now," said he and Doc
Philipps, in telling Nan Ainslee about it afterwards, swore that not
only the minister's two eyes but his very voice twinkled.

Cynthia's son found Mr. Austin in his prop