IVORY BOYNTON had taken the horse and gone to the village on an errand,
a rare thing for him to do after dark, so Rod was thinking, as he sat
in the living-room learning his Sunday-School lesson on the same evening
that the men were gossiping at the brick store. His aunt had required
him, from the time when he was proficient enough to do so, to read
at least a part of a chapter in the Bible every night. Beginning with
Genesis he had reached Leviticus and had made up his mind that the Bible
was a much more difficult book than “Scottish Chiefs,” not withstanding
the fact that Ivory helped him over most of the hard places. At the
present juncture he was vastly interested in the subject of “rods”
as unfolded in the book of Exodus, which was being studied by his
Sunday-School class. What added to the excitement was the fact that
his uncle's Christian name, Aaron, kept appearing in the chronicle, as
frequently as that of the great lawgiver Moses himself; and there were
many verses about the wonder-working rods of Moses and Aaron that had a
strange effect upon the boy's ear, when he read them aloud, as he loved
to do whenever he was left alone for a time. When his aunt was in the
room his instinct kept him from doing this, for the mere mention of the
name of Aaron, he feared, might sadden his aunt and provoke in her that
dangerous vein of reminiscence that made Ivory so anxious.
“It kind o' makes me nervous to be named 'Rod,' Aunt Boynton,” said the
boy, looking up from the Bible. “All the rods in these Exodus chapters
do such dreadful things! They become serpents, and one of them swallows
up all the others: and Moses smites the waters with a rod and they
become blood, and the people can't drink the water and the fish die!
Then they stretch a rod across the streams and ponds and bring a plague
of frogs over the land, with swarms of flies and horrible insects.”
“That was to show God's power to Pharaoh, and melt his hard heart to
obedience and reverence,” explained Mrs. Boynton, who had known the
Bible from cover to cover in her youth and could still give chapter and
verse for hundreds of her favorite passages.
“It took an awful lot of melting, Pharaoh's heart!” exclaimed the boy.
“Pharaoh must have been worse than Deacon Baxter! I wonder if they ever
tried to make him good by being kind to him! I've read and read, but I
can't find they used anything on him but plagues and famines and boils
and pestilences and thunder and hail and fire!--Have I got a middle
name, Aunt Boynton, for I don't like Rod very much?”
“I never heard that you had a middle name; you must ask Ivory,” said his
aunt abstractedly.
“Did my father name me Rod, or my mother?'
“I don't really know; perhaps it was your mother, but don't ask
questions, please.”
“I forgot, Aunt Boynton! Yes, I think perhaps my mother named me.
Mothers 'most always name their babies, don't they? My mother wasn't
like you; she looked just like the picture of Pocahontas in my History.
She never knew about these Bible rods, I guess.”
“When you go a little further you will find pleasanter things about
rods,” said his aunt, knitting, knitting, intensely, as was her habit,
and talking as if her mind were a thousand miles away. “You know they
were just little branches of trees, and it was only God's power that
made them wonderful in any way.”
“Oh! I thought they were like the singing-teacher's stick he keeps time
with.”
“No; if you look at your Concordance you'll finds it gives you a
chapter in Numbers where there's something beautiful about rods. I have
forgotten the place; it has been many years since I looked at it.
Find it and read it aloud to me.” The boy searched his Concordance and
readily found the reference in the seventeenth chapter of Numbers.
“Stand near me and read,” said Mrs. Boynton. “I like to hear the Bible
read aloud!”
Rodman took his Bible and read, slowly and haltingly, but with clearness
and understanding: