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Upstairs the owners of the house, an old couple named Johnson, and Emma's own child, were at rest. Susannah lay rigidly still in the small portion of the bed which fell to her share. Her mind was up, wandering through waste places, seeking rest in vain. The wail of the child in the next room at last had ceased. The prophet had lain down with it on the truckle bed.
"Say to Sister Susannah that I would like to see her here," said the doctor. The man went out and was presently succeeded by a sweet faced, middle aged woman in a black dress and a neat white cap. "Here are the friends of the young lady who was brought in yesterday morning. Will you please to take them to the bedside of your patient?"
"Do you love them the less because they are not angels?" asked Elvira. "Have you forgiven?" Susannah shuddered at the intensity of the hard low tones, the passion in the word "love," the sneer in the word "forgive."
"He is dying, she said," replied the young widow with feeling. "Our best and truest friend," sobbed Susannah. "It is, it really is too much. I often think that I must myself succumb, and as for her hardly more than a child! And with what resignation she bears the heaviest sorrows!
The writing took so long that when she carried the letter again to the tithing office to be stamped and sent, the post-bag of that day had already gone. Later, when the office was closed to the public and Elder Darling was alone, he took up the letter which Susannah had brought and looked at it curiously. His eyes had caught the address.
And this was only one of several fêtes which took place in rapid succession, to all of which Susannah was by some persuasion taken. At each she found herself an object of public attention.
She had not loved Halsey and his child as she might have loved. Susannah had always recognised a certain bigness in Smith's character because of the power he had of giving himself to man, woman, and child; now she felt her own inferiority. Was she to stand babbling to him about hallucinations and gold plates?
They were therefore easily justified either to reason or to the eye of faith, but the results of their application were often startling, and it was facts, not theories, that chiefly caused Susannah to stagger. At length the growing excitement among the congregation seemed to gather toward some climax. It was then that Joseph Smith was said for the first time to cast out devils.
I'll be the Chief, and my name is Opodeldoc. You two girls can be squaws, no, you needn't either. Mehitabel can be a Squaw, and Susannah, you are a pale-faced Maiden, and we'll capture you. Then Hezekiah here can be a noble young Brave, who will rescue you from our clutches! His name will be Ipecacuanha." Surely Cousin Jack knew how to play Indians!
Cross, pausing with a large bite of bread and butter distending her cheek, and uplifting her hands. "Well, to think of it!" "'Ees, as I often did say," resumed Mrs. Domeny, "it did seem from the very beginnin' as though 'twas meant to be. She was a-livin' next door to Susannah hadn't long come, d'ye see, and didn't know any of the neighbours to speak on.
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