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Farrinder on the sofa the girl had quitted; and Miss Birdseye's visitors, for the rest, settled themselves attentively in chairs or leaned against the bare sides of the parlour.
Farrinder was perceptibly irritated; she appeared to have made up her mind, after her first hesitation, that the Tarrant family were fantastical and compromising. She had bent an eye of coldness on Selah and his wife she might have regarded them all as a company of mountebanks.
Meanwhile Verena, more and more withdrawn into herself, but perfectly undisturbed by the public discussion of her mystic faculty, turned yet again, very prettily, to Mrs. Farrinder, and asked her if she wouldn't strike out just to give her courage. By this time Mrs. Farrinder was in a condition of overhanging gloom; she greeted the charming suppliant with the frown of Juno.
He had expected more of a programme; he wanted to hear some of the new truths. Mrs. Farrinder, as he said, remained within her tent, and he had hoped not only to see these distinguished people but also to listen to them. "Well, I ain't disappointed," the sturdy little doctress replied. "If any question had been opened, I suppose I should have had to stay."
Basil took advantage of this intermission to ask Miss Birdseye if she would give him the great privilege of an introduction to Miss Verena. "Mrs. Farrinder will thank her for the company," he said, laughing, "but she won't thank her for me." Miss Birdseye manifested the greatest disposition to oblige him; she was so glad he had been impressed.
As she stood there drawing on her gloves her visitor had fortified himself against Mrs. Farrinder by another glass of wine she declared to him that she quite repented of having proposed to him to go; something told her that he would be an unfavourable element. "Why, is it going to be a spiritual séance?" Basil Ransom asked. "Well, I have heard at Miss Birdseye's some inspirational speaking."
If Olive didn't say at once that she was jealous of Verena's more attractive manner, it was only because such a declaration was destined to produce more effect a little later. What she did say was that evidently Mrs. Farrinder wanted to keep the movement in her own hands viewed with suspicion certain romantic, esthetic elements which Olive and Verena seemed to be trying to introduce into it.
"Do you mean your voting and preaching and all that sort of thing?" He made this inquiry, but seeing how seriously she would take his answer, he was almost frightened, and hung fire. "I will tell you when I have heard Mrs. Farrinder." They had arrived at the address given by Miss Chancellor to the coachman, and their vehicle stopped with a lurch.
Farrinder was liable to rear up, as they used to say down in Pennsylvania, where he lived before he began to peddle lead-pencils. She wouldn't always take things as you might expect, and if it didn't meet her views to pay a public tribute to Verena, there wasn't any way known to Tarrant's ingenious mind of getting round her. If it was a question of a favour from Mrs.
Miss Chancellor could imagine whether, as an old friend, he could watch such a beautiful unfolding with indifference. The fact was, she was a great card, and some one ought to play it. There never had been a more attractive female speaker before the American public; she would walk right past Mrs. Farrinder, and Mrs. Farrinder knew it.
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