When Elmer entered, they were on their knees, their arms on the seats of reversed chairs, their heads bowed, all praying aloud and together. They looked up at him like old women surveying the bride. He wanted to bolt. Then the president nabbed him, and had him down on his knees, suffering and embarrassed and wondering what the devil to pray about.
They took turns at telling God what he ought to do in the case of "our so ardently and earnestly seeking brother."
"Now will you lift your voice in prayer, Brother Elmer? Just let yourself go. Remember we're all with you, all loving and helping you," grated the president.
They crowded near him. The president put his stiff old arm about Elmer's shoulder. It felt like a dry bone, and the president smelled of kerosene. Eddie crowded up on the other side and nuzzled against him. The others crept in, patting him. It was horribly hot in that room, and they were so close—he felt as if he were tied down in a hospital ward. He looked up and saw the long shaven face, the thin tight lips, of a minister . . . whom he was now to emulate.
He prickled with horror, but he tried to pray. He wailed, "O blessed Lord, help me to—help me to—"
He had an enormous idea. He sprang up. He cried, "Say, I think the spirit is beginning to work and maybe if I just went out and took a short walk and kinda prayed by myself, while you stayed here and prayed for me, it might help."
"I don't think that would be the way," began the president, but the most aged faculty-member suggested, "Maybe it's the Lord's guidance. We hadn't ought to interfere with the Lord's guidance, Brother Quarles."
"That's so, that's so," the president announced. "You have your walk, Brother Elmer, and pray hard, and we'll stay here and besiege the throne of grace for you."
Elmer blundered out into the fresh clean air.
Whatever happened, he was never going back! How he hated their soft, crawly, wet hands!
He had notions of catching the last train to Cato and getting solacingly drunk. No. He'd lose his degree, just a month off now, and be cramped later in appearing as a real, high-class, college-educated lawyer.
Lose it, then! Anything but go back to their crawling creepy hands, their aged breathing by his ear—
