"I've heard him preach, and he's a damn good preacher too, I want to tell you."
Marley warmed under this profane indorsement. He had always, from a boy, felt somehow that he must defend his father's position as a preacher from the world, as with the little world of his boyhood and youth he had always had to defend his own position as the son of a preacher.
"Yes, sir, he's a good preacher, and a good man," Powell went on. He had taken a cigar from his pocket and was nipping the end from it with his teeth. He lighted it, and leaned back comfortably again to smoke, and then in tardy hospitality he drew another cigar from his waistcoat pocket and held it toward Marley.
"Smoke?" he said, and then he added apologetically, "I didn't think; I never do."
Marley declined the cigar, but Powell pressed it on him, saying:
"Well, your father does, I'll bet. Give it to him with Wade Powell's compliments. He won't hesitate to smoke with a publican and sinner."
Marley smiled and put the cigar away in his pocket.
"I don't know, though," Powell went on slowly, speaking as much to himself as to Marley, while he watched the thick white clouds he rolled from his lips, "that he'd want you to be in my office. I know some of the _brethren_ wouldn't approve. They'd think I'd contaminate you."
Marley would have hastened to reassure Powell had he known how to do so without seeming to recognize the possibility of contamination; but while he hesitated Powell avoided the necessity for him by asking:
He looked at Marley eagerly, and with an expression of unfounded hope, as he awaited the answer.
"No," replied Marley, "he doesn't know. I haven't talked with him at all. I have to do something and I've always thought I'd go into the law. I presume it would be better to go to a law school, but father couldn't afford that after putting me through college. I thought I could read law in some office, and maybe get admitted that way."
"Sure," said Powell, "it's easy enough. You'll have to learn the law after you get to practising anyway--and there isn't much to learn at that. It's mostly a fake."
Marley looked at him in some alarm, at this new smiting of an idol.
"I began to read law," Powell went on, "under old Judge Colwin--that is, what I read. I used to sit at the window with a book in my lap and watch the girls go by. Still," he added with a tone of doing himself some final justice, "it was a liberal education to sit under the old judge's drippings. I learned more that way than I ever did at the law school."