city, that is what we want. I consider
tact, and broad-mindedness and self-sacrifice no small qualities for a
minister of the gospel; and a combination of those qualities, as in you,
I consider exceptional. So I went to this vestry meeting primed, and I
told them we had got to have you, sir--and we've got to. You'll come?"

The question was much like an order, but Rex did not mind. "Indeed, I'll
come, Judge Rush," he said, and his manner of saying it won the last
doubtful bit of the Judge's heart.

The Sunday morning when the new assistant preached his first sermon in
St. Eric's, there sat well back in the congregation a dark-eyed girl,
and with her a tall and powerful young man, whose deep shoulders and
movements, as of a well fitted machine, advertised an athlete in perfect
form. The girl's face was rapt as she followed, her soul in her eyes,
the clean-cut, short sermon, and when the congregation filtered slowly
down the aisles she said not a word. But as the two turned into the
street she spoke at last.

"He is a saint, isn't he, Billy?" she asked, and drew a long breath of
contentment.

And from six-feet-two in mid-air came Billy Strong's dictum. "Margery,"
he said, impressively, "Rex may be a parson and all that, but, to my
mind, that's not against him; to my mind that suits his style of
handling the gloves. There was a chap in the Bible"--Billy swallowed as
if embarrassed--"who--who was the spit 'n' image of Rex--the good
Samaritan chap, you know. He found a seedy one falling over himself by
the wayside, and he called him a beast and set him up, and took him to a
hotel or something and told the innkeeper to charge it to him, and--I
forget the exact words, but he saw him through, don't you know? And he
did it all in a sporty sort of way and there wasn't a word of whining or
fussing at him because he was loaded--that was awfully white of the
chap. Rex did more than that for me and not a syllable has he peeped
since. And, you know, the consequence of that masterly silence is that
I've gone on the water-wagon--yes, sir--for a year. And I'm hanged if
I'm not going to church every Sunday. He may be a saint as you say, and
I suppose there's no doubt but he's horrid intellectual--every man must
have his weaknesses. But the man that's a good Samaritan and a good
sport all in one, he's my sort, I'm for him," said Billy Strong.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A GOOD SAMARITAN***

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