"God grant it does any good, dear girl," said he. "Far be it from me to say that you shall not try--"
But here he stopped speaking, for he felt Matty's arm shake in his, and her whole frame trembled. Tom had only to keep his eyes before him to see why.
Mr. Greenhithe, Matty's old admirer, the clerk who had been dismissed for stealing, was just entering the church, and even touched his hat to her as she went by.
Tom resisted his temptation to thrash him then and there. He said,-- "Matty, I believe I will tackle that man!"
"Oh, Tom!"
"Yes, Matty, I can keep my temper, and he cannot keep his. He has one advantage over most knaves, that he is not only a knave of the first water, but he is sometimes a fool, too. If it were only decent and right to take him into Downing's saloon, and give him just one more glass of whiskey than the blackguard would care to pay for, I could get at his whole story."
"But, Tom, I thought you were so sure the Navy had the papers!"
"Well! well!" said Tom, a little annoyed, as eager people are when other eager people remember their words against them. "I was sure--I was wholly sure--till I left Eben Ricketts. But after that--well, of course, we ought to pull every string."
"Tom!" This with a terrible gulp.
"Tom, you don't think I ought to speak with him!" "Matty!"
"Why, Tom, yes; if he does know--if he is holding this up in terror, Tom, I could make him do what I chose once, Tom. You don't think I ought to try?"
"Matty, if you ever speak to that snake again, I will thrash him within an inch of his life, and I will never say a word to you as long as you live."
"That's my dear Tom!" And, hidden as they were, and crying as she was under her veil, she flung her arms around him and kissed him.
"All the same," said Tom, after he had kissed her again and again,--"all the same, I shall find out, after church, where the snake is staying. I shall go to the hotel and take a cigar. I shall offer him one, and he is so mean and stingy that he will take it. Perhaps this may be one of his fool days. Perhaps somebody else will treat him to the whiskey. No, Matty! honor bright, _I_ will not, though that ten cents might give us all a Merry Christmas. Honor bright, I will not treat. But I am not a saint, Matty! If anybody else treats, I must not be expected to be far away."
Then he wiped her eyes with his own handkerchief and led her in to the service. Their own pew was already full. He had to take her back into Dr. Metcalf's pew.
So Matty was spared one annoyance which was prepared for her.
Directly in front of her father's pew, sitting in the most conspicuous seat on the other side of the aisle, was the hateful Mr. Greenhithe.
Had he put himself there to watch Matty's face?
If he did, he was disappointed. If he had persuaded himself he was to see a pale cheek or tearful eyes, or that he was going to compel her to drop her veil, he had reckoned quite without his host. Whenever he did look that way, all he saw was the face of Master Horace. Horace was engaged in counting the large tassels on his side of the pulpit curtains; in counting, also, the number of small tassels between them, and from the data thus obtained, in calculating how many tassels there must be on all the curtains to the pulpit, and how many on the curtains behind the rail to the chancel. Mr. Greenhithe, therefore, had but little comfort in studying Horace's face.
Just as the Creed was finished, when the rest of the church was still, the sexton led up the aisle a grim- looking man, with a shaggy coat and a very dirty face, and brought him close to the door of Mr. Molyneux's pew-- as if he would fain bring him in. Mr. Molyneux was at the end of the pew, but happened to be turning away from the aisle, and the sexton actually touched him. He turned round and looked at the stranger,--evidently did not know him,--but with the instinct of hospitality, stepped into the aisle and offered him his seat. The stranger was embarrassed; hesitated as if he would speak, then shook his head in refusal of the attention, and crossing the aisle, took a seat offered him there, in full sight of Mr. Molyneux, and, indeed, of Matty.
Poor girl! The trifle--of course it was a trifle-- upset her sadly.
Was the man a marshal or a sheriff? Would they really arrest her father on Christmas Day, in church?
Chapter IV. Is This Christmas?
Yes; it was, as you have said, a very curious Christmas service for all those people. What Horace turned his mind to, at intervals, has been told.
Of the elder members of our little company who sat there near the head of the side aisle, it may be said, in general, that they did their best to keep their hearts and minds engaged in the service, and that sometimes they succeeded. They succeeded better while they could really join in the hymns and the prayers than they did when it came to the sermon. Good Dr. Gill, overruled by one of those lesser demons, whose work is so apparent though so inexplicable in this finite world, had selected for the text of his sermon of gladness the words, "Search and look." And so it happened--it was what did not often happen with him--he must needs repeat those words often, at the beginning and end, indeed, of every leading paragraph of the sermon. Now this duty of searching and looking had been just what all the elder members of the Molyneux family had been solidly doing--each in his way or hers, directly or by sympathy--in the last forty- eight hours. To get such relief as they might from it, they had come to church,