Shirley had to laugh shamefacedly then.
"But I couldn't!" said Shirley. "I'd be so scared I couldn't think of a thing to say."
"You're not afraid of me, Miss Shirley? You wouldn't be scared if you thought I really needed to know the message, would you? Well, I really do, as much as any of those kids."
Shirley looked steadily into his earnest eyes and saw something there that steadied her nerve. The laughter died out of her own eyes, and a beautiful light of longing came into them.
"All right," she said, with a little lift of her chin as if girding up her strength to the task. "You may come, and I'll do the best I can, but I'm afraid it will be a poor best. I've only a little story to tell them this morning."
"Please give them just what you had intended. I want the real thing, just as a boy would get it from you. Will the rest of them come in the car with us?"
Shirley was very quiet during the ride to church. She let the rest do all the talking, and she sat looking off at the woods and praying for help, trying to calm the flutter of her frightened heart, trying to steady her nerves and brace herself to teach the lesson just as she had intended to teach it.
She watched him furtively during the opening exercises, the untrained singing, the monotonous prayer of an old farmer-elder, the dry platitudes of the illiterate superintendent; but he sat respectfully listening, taking it all for what it was worth, the best service these people knew how to render to their Maker.
Somehow her heart had gained the strength she needed from the prayers she breathed continually, and when the time for teaching the lesson arrived she came to her class with quietness.
There was a little awe upon the boys because of the stranger in their midst. They did not fling the hymn-books down with a noisy thud, nor send the lesson leaves flying like winged darts across the room quite so much as they were wont to do. They looked askance at Harley, who sat proudly by the visitor, supplying him with Bibles, hymn-books, lesson leaves, and finding the place for him officiously. But Graham sat among the boys without ostentation, and made as little of his own presence as possible. He smiled at them now and then, put a handful of silver into the collection envelope when they would have passed him by, and promised a ride to one fellow who ventured to ask him hoarsely if that was his car outside the church.