"Oh, 'bout three days."
"Say, want to have you up to the house for dinner; but doggone it, Cleo—that's my wife—I'm married now—she's gone and got me all sewed up with a lot of dates—you know how these women are—me, I'd rather sit home and read. But sure got to see you again. Say, gimme a ring, will you?—at the house (find it in the tel'phone book) or at my study here in the church."
"Yuh, sure, you bet. Well, glad to seen you."
"You bet. Tickled t' death seen you, old Jim!"
Elmer watched Jim plod away, shoulders depressed, a man discouraged.
"And that," he rejoiced, "is the poor fish that tried to keep me from going into the ministry!" He looked about his auditorium, with the organ pipes a vast golden pyramid, with the Chubbuck memorial window vivid in ruby and gold and amethyst. "And become a lawyer like him, in a dirty stinking little office! Huh! And he actually made fun of me and tried to hold me back when I got a clear and definite Call of God! Oh, I'll be good and busy when he calls up, you can bet on that!"
Jim did not telephone.
On the third day Elmer had a longing to see him, a longing to regain his friendship. But he did not know where Jim was staying; he could not reach him at the principal hotels.
He never saw Jim Lefferts again, and within a week he had forgotten him, except as it was a relief to have lost his embarrassment before Jim's sneering—the last bar between him and confident greatness.
It was in the summer of 1924 that Elmer was granted a three-months leave, and for the first time Cleo and he visited Europe.
He had heard the Rev. Dr. G. Prosper Edwards say, "I divide American clergymen into just two classes—those who could be invited to preach in a London church, and those who couldn't." Dr. Edwards was of the first honorable caste, and Elmer had seen him pick up great glory from having sermonized in the City Temple. The Zenith papers, even the national religious periodicals, hinted that when Dr. Edwards was in
