United States or Lebanon ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
You couldn't get Abel away now, not if you went on an hour. Don't separate families!" "Well, just as you say, Squire," Mrs. Reverdy snickered, and she submitted to pull up the chair which Mrs. Braile's glance had suggested. "It beats all what a excitement there is in this town about the goun's on at the camp-meetun', last night. If I've heard it from one I've heard it from a dozen.
"Yes, sir," the man on the claybank went on, carried forward by his own interest, but helpless to deny himself the guilty pleasure of falling in with Braile's humor, "he had 'em goun' lively, about midnight, now I tell you: whoopun' and yellun', and rippun' and stavun', and fallun' down with the jerks, and pullun' and haulun' at the sinners, to git 'em up to the mourners' bench, and hurrahun' over 'em, as fast as they was knocked down and drug out.
In this he satisfied that obscure fealty of the husband who feels that such a connection of the absent wife with some actual experience of his is equivalent to their joint presence. It was not so much to praise Mrs. Braile's belongings to her as to propitiate the idea of Mrs. Reverdy that he continued his flatteries.
On the way back he wouldn't talk at all, hardly, but just kep' sayun', 'The perfect work is done, and he didn't give his shout any more; just snorted." Braile's pipe had gone out, but he pulled at it two or three times, before he said, "Well, Abel, I don't wonder Sally is excited. I suppose you would be, if you believed a word of this yarn?"
But I don't want any trouble about you this morning; I had enough that other morning. Come in here!" He set open the door of one of the rooms giving on the porch, and at Dylks's fearful glance he laughed, not altogether unkindly. "Mis' Braile's in the kitchen, getting breakfast for you, though she don't know it yet. Now, then!" he commanded when he sat down within, and pushed a chair to Dylks.
His pain and his pleasure both came from Braile's leaving the incident alone and turning the ridicule upon him.
They left some of the slumberers still sleeping; of the others not all followed them on their way to Matthew Braile's, up through the woods and past the cornfields and tobacco patches; but with those of the Little Flock who had hung night-long about the Temple, singing and praying to their idol, they arrived, some before and some after the prisoner, at the log cabin of the magistrate.
The girl stopped for her; then in apparent haste she moved on again, and Sally moved with her out of sight; her voice still made itself heard in uncouth cries and laughter. Braile called into the kitchen where Reverdy had remained in the enjoyment of Mrs. Braile's patient hospitality, "Here's your chance, Abel!" "Chance?" Reverdy questioned back with a full mouth.
Gillespie had not seemed to invite him, and his shy daughter had shrunk aside when the chief citizens urged their claims; yet the stranger went with them to their outlying farm, and spent all the next day there alone in the tall woods that shut its corn fields in. Sally Reverdy had failed to get any light from the Gillespie girl when she ran out from Squire Braile's cabin.
They reached Braile's cabin, and he said, "Well, now come in and have something to stay your stomach while you're waiting for Sally to make the coffee you're going to borrow." "No, I reckon not, Squire," Abel loyally held out. "Well, then, come in and get the coffee, anyhow." "I reckon that's a good idea, Squire," Abel assented with a laugh for the joke at his cost.
Word Of The Day