THE STEADFAST HEART
keep them at home…. I want you to promise to send him Sunday.”
“Be an interesting experiment in Christian charity,” said Wilkins. “I’ll send him.”
So it was that Angus Burke, bathed, scrubbed, and arrayed in his best, went to Alvin Trueman’s church on the following Sabbath—conducted to the door by Dave Wilkins. As they entered, Malcolm Crane, superintendent of the Sunday school, had the song book open and was turning his face slowly from right to left, so that its benevolent smile—the vacuous, condescending smile which some adults believe has charms for children—could be plainly seen by all. Crane’s version of the benevolent smile verged a trifle on the oily; certainly it was smug. His eyes were opened to their widest capacity, as though he were surprised at his own genial bearing, and his mouth was bent in a curve which made one think of the cat that ate the canary. It was his custom to rise to his toes squeakily, then to subside again with a billowy motion which was very attractive indeed to the small boys who, under Mary Trueman’s supervision, flourished in the pews directly under the superintendent’s eyes.
Dave Wilkins paused in the door long enough to locate Mary Trueman, and then, with perfect calm, walked down the aisle, followed by Angus, and stopped at the end of the pew where she sat.
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