Blair Collection > Rhys Lewis, minister of Bethel

RHYS LEWIS. ■ 257
tried. I wanted to tell you I had resolved to become a good
boy, if I shall have help to do so. And there is nothing on
earth I would like better than for you to take the same resolu-
tion. You have always been a great friend of mine, and if our
mode of life differs so much that we are obliged to part, it will
be a most painful thing to me. Tou know as well as I, and
better, that it won't do to go on as we have done ; it is sure to
end badly. Do you not think of that, sometimes. Will?"
" Go on with your sermon. Say : ' we will observe, second-
ly,' " returned Will.
"No sermon at all. Will," said I. " Only a friendly con-
versation."
" Well, if it isn't a sermon, I've heard many worse," he re-
marked. " But to be serious. I had for some time seen that
you had gone on that line, and I said so, didn't I ? To tell
the truth, I didn't much wonder at it, because religion comes
natural to your family, barring your father— no offence, mind.
If I'd been brought up like you, p'r'aps there'd be a touch of
religion about me too ; but you never saw less of that sort of
thing anywhere than yonder, except the bit we get on Sunday.
Though not quite a pattern of morality myself, still I think I
know what religion is. If I hadn't been acquainted with your
mother, old Abel, ' Old Waterworks,' and some half a dozen
others, I should have thought, for certain, they were hypo-
crites, the whole bag of tricks."
"It isn't proper in you. Will, to speak lightly of your
parents," I observed.
" I don't speak lightly of them," he rejoined. " It's of their
religion I'm talking ; and man and his religion are two differ-
ent things entirely. As a man of business, clever at a bargain,
as a money-maker, and one who takes care to find plenty of
grub for a chap, the gaffer is A 1. But I'll take my oath he
can't repeat two verses of Scripture correctly, any more than
myself. He never looks at the Bible except for a couple of
minutes before going to school on the Sunday. It is as good as
new now— the Bible he had presented him on his marriage;
not like your mother's, all to smithereens. I believe, though,
that if his day-book and ledger caught fire to night, the old man