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Elder Wessel wuz took completely back, I could see, by Arvilly's eloquence, and I wuz myself. The sharp-toothed harrow of grief had turned up new furrows in her soul, in which strange plants growed. And before Elder Wessel could speak she went on a-thinkin' back about sunthin' he'd said. "Indulgences to sin!
"The poor man," sez Elder Wessel in his most dictorial way, all of Arvilly's talk havin' slipped offen him like rain water offen a brass horn, "the poor man, after he has worked hard all day, and has nothing to go home to but a room full of cryin' children, discomfort, squalor and a complaining wife, is justified in my opinion to go to the only bright, happy place he knows of, the saloon."
Finally the letters stopped, and then Waitstill, whose heart wuz broke, jined the noble army of nurses and went forward to the front, always hunting for the one beloved, and, as she feared, lost to her. And she found him. The very day that Alan Thorne, in a drunken brawl, killed Arvilly's husband with a bullet meant for another drunken youth, these wimmen met.
And the good old soul advanced with a warm, meller smile on his face, and sez: "How do you do, Sister Arvilly." But Arvilly's eyes snapped worse than ever; she never noticed his outstretched hand, and she sez, "Don't you sister me." "Why! why!" sez he, "what is the matter?"
Arvilly's views, tinged and shadowed as they always are, by what she's went through, they both got mad as hens before they got through. There are ruins of a large aqueduct near, which wuz flooded with water, I spoze, for acquatic sports way back, mebby back to Anna D, or before her. Some say that early Christians were put to death in this amphitheatre, but it hain't very clearly proved.
My principles on intemperance and monopolies would have riled him up dretful, and Arvilly's talk made him hoppin' mad. I d'no what he would have took it into his head to do. And I never should have gin him the freedom of Jonesville, never, he needn't thought on't; nor I never should invited him to make a all day's visit to our house, nor a afternoon one, either.
As much store as I set by Arvilly's cast-iron principles, somehow I couldn't bear the thought of having Shakespeare canvassed. All the rooms are named after Shakespeare's plays, painted over the doors in black letters. We slept in "All's Well That Ends Well" a good name and we slept peaceful, thinkin' likely that it would turn out so. Miss Meechim had the "Merry Wives of Windsor."
But I sent up a tray of good vittles which wuz refused, and I d'no as she eat a mou'ful that day. At night I went agin to the door, and agin I hearn the sound of weepin' inside. Sez I, "Arvilly, let me in; I've got a letter for you from Waitstill Webb." Sweet little creeter! She remembered her agony, and dropped this flower onto the grave of Arvilly's happiness.
He said Mudd-Weakdew always had been successful in quelling these rebellious workmen down, and making them keep their place, and he thought he would now as soon as he arrived there. I know Arvilly and Miss Meechim had words about it when she read the letter. Miss Meechim deplored the state of affairs, and resented Arvilly's talk; she said it was so wicked to help array one class aginst another.
But of their talks together and Arvilly's arguments with Elder Wessel more anon and bime by. Arvilly stood up aginst the sea-sickness as she would aginst a obstinate subscriber, and finally brought the sickness to terms as she would the buyer, on the third day, and appeared pale but triumphant, with a subscription book in her hand and the words of her prospectus dribblin' from her lips.
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