“Sounds interesting,” said Marty, “but sort of mysterious.  Is it anything I can do team-work on?”

“It surely is, but first I’ve got to say something, and I want you to promise that you won’t think I’m putting on, or butting in, because I’m not; nothing like it.  Will you?”

“Will I promise?” said Marty, much bewildered.  “Course I’ll promise not to think anything about you that you don’t want me to think, but I must say I don’t know within a thousand miles what you’re driving at.  Out with it, and even if you’re the train bandit who held up the Cannonball or if you’ve plotted to kidnap the Board of Education, I’ll never tell.”

Marty’s quizzical humor was not making J.W.’s enterprise any easier.  He had always supposed that what the leaflets called “personal evangelism” had to be done in a spirit of solemnity.  But how was he to acquire the proper frame of mind?  And certainly there was nothing solemn about Marty just now.  Yet the thing had gone too far; it was too late to retreat.  He tried to think how Mr. Drury would do it, but saw only that if it was Mr. Dairy’s business he would go straight to the center of it.  Desperately, therefore, he plunged in.

“Well, Marty,” he said, speaking now with nervous haste, “what I’m up against is this.  What’s the matter with your being a Christian?”

He will never forget the swift look of blank amazement that Marty turned on him, nor the slow-mounting flush that followed the first astonished start.  For Marty did not answer, and turned his face away.  J.W. was sure that in his blundering bluntness he had offended and probably angered his closest friend.  The distress of that thought served at least to drive away all the self-consciousness which thus far had plagued him.

“Say, Marty,” he pleaded, putting his hand on the other’s arm, “forget it, if I’ve hurt your feelings.  I know as well as you do that I’m not fit to talk about such things to anybody, and, honest, I meant nothing but to say what I knew I’d got to say.”

Then Marty turned himself back slowly, and J.W. saw the troubled look in his eyes.  In a voice that trembled despite his proud effort at control, he said, “Old man, you needn’t apologize.  You did surprise me, I’ll admit; I wasn’t looking for anything like this.  It’s all right, though, and I’m certainly not mad about it.  But, say, J.W., let me put something up to you.  Why did you never think to ask me that question before?”

“Why, it was this way,” J.W. began, somewhat puzzled at the form of the question, and still thinking he must set himself right with Marty.  “You know the Epworth League is planning for those special meetings soon—­’Win-My-Chum Week’—­and I’ve been asked to lead one of the meetings.  But you can see that I wouldn’t be ready to lead a meeting like that unless I had put this thing of being a Christian up to you, anyway.  You’re the only real chum I’ve got.  Mr. Drury said something a little while ago that made it mighty plain.”