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So Drew resigned himself to the Power that is. It was Billy Falstar who broke upon Joyce's solitude after Ruth Dale had left her. Worn beyond the point where conscious suffering held strong part, Joyce was completing her final arrangements mechanically and laboriously when Billy presented himself.
"Him and me was going by Falstar's the other day, and Peggy was washing uncommon hard. Drew, he steps close to the tubs and says he, 'I tell you, Mrs. Falstar, I don't know no better religion than getting the spots out instead of slighting them.
Constance Drew was an adept at prolonging pleasure and thereby intensifying it. With the tree bowed with fruit, standing glorified before them, the rapt company listened with amaze to Maggie Falstar as she sniffled and hitched through a poem so distorted that the only semi-intelligible words were: "An snow they snelt at the manger, lost in reverent raw."
Poor Jock smiled pitifully in his effort to appear unconcerned. "They sit at her feet lost to everything but what she tells 'em. Billy Falstar, before he left to be a camp fiddler, was a reformed brat. She had smote him hip and thigh, and finished him, as far as a career of crime is concerned.
That must be public property, and its piteous appeal had no power beyond the mother, to stay the cruel jest and jibe. "Say, Jude," Peter Falstar had said in offering his maudlin congratulations, "what's that you got up to your place a baby or a Chinese idol? That comes of having a handsome wife, what has notions beyond what women can digest."
Angé getting to a court o' law?" asked Tom Smith. "But Jared ain't never had a daughter married before." Tate nodded his head sagely. "Jared's a deep one, and, taken off his guard, shows he knows more about law and order than any one man I ever let my eyes fall on." "He must be all-fired off his guard," jeered Falstar, "when he talks order of any kind. Where is he, anyway?" "Exactly."
Gaston knew it. Filmer knew it. Peggy Falstar had hold of her little Billy's hand, and Peter followed with his little daughter Maggie drawn close to him. Leon Tate was red in the face, and Isa looked stern and thoughtful. Yes; something had happened in St. Angé. It would never be the same. Drew went outside the church and joined Filmer. He had seen the uplifted expression on Joyce's face.
In his dreams the scene Billy Falstar had so luridly described was enacted again and again, until he felt as if he, Jude, had been the onlooker. The people whom he had taken for granted in the past now assumed new meaning and importance. Gaston had slipped in among them three years before, and after the first few months of observation he had aroused no interest.
Land! the learning that child was capable of absorbing! Hillcrest School just sunk into him like he was a sponge. When he got all he could over there, he just walked off as natural as could be, without a cent to his name and they do say, so I've heard, that down the state they set an awful store by his knowledge of stars and moons and such-like. And Mick Falstar, cousin to Pete "
Angé woman poured her troubles into Aunt Sally's ears, and went forever after with uplifted head. "Why, my dear," the old lady said to Ralph, after Peggy Falstar had taken her into her confidence, "these people are much like others, only they have the rough bark on. They are a great deal more vital the bark has, somehow, kept the sap richer." Drew laughed heartily.
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