The Christian - A Story by Sir Hall Caine
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page 41 of 751 (05%)
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long education abroad--and your poor father left to look after himself!
Good-day to you. Come and see me now and then. How like your mother you are sometimes! Good-day!" When the door of the cabinet room closed on John Storm the Prime Minister thought, "Poor boy, he's laying up for himself a big heartache one of these fine days!" And John Storm, going down the street with uncertain step, said to himself: "How strange he should talk like that! But, thank God, he didn't produce a flicker in me. I died to all that a year ago." Then he lifted his head and his footstep lightened, and deep in some secret place the thought came proudly, "She shall see that to renounce the world is to possess the world--that a man may be poor and have all the kingdom of the world at his feet." He went back by the Underground from Westminster Bridge. It was midday, and the train was crowded. His spirits were high and he talked with every one near him. Getting out at Victoria, he came upon his vicar on the platform and saluted him rather demonstratively. The canon responded with some restraint and then stepped into a first-class carriage. On turning into Eaton Place he came upon a group of people standing around something that lay on the pavement. It was an old woman, a tattered, bedraggled creature with a pinched and pallid face. "Is it an accident?" a gentleman was saying, and somebody answered, "No, sir, she's gorn off in a faint." "Why doesn't some one take her to the hospital?" said the gentleman, and then, like the Levite, he passed by on the other side. The butcher's cart drew up at the curb, and the butcher jumped |
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