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Carpenter jerked his slouch hat down over his eyes and went quickly out. In half an hour he was back again. His hat was off, his face was red, his shaggy eyebrows quivered with angry determination, as, with one hand in the collar of the frightened Bud, he pulled the slubber into the superintendent's presence. Following her husband came Mrs.
A moment later the young man whose spear he held had joined the other in slumber. The elderly steward was not satisfied with the mere spears. While the rescued Kwaque continued to moan and slubber thankfulness at his feet, he proceeded to strip them that were naked.
His diary redounded in dismal groans and self-abasement: he wrote out in detail his covenants with God. He laid out his minute rules and directions in his various religious duties. He lived in prayer thrice a day, and "did not slubber over his prayers with hasty amputations, but wrestled in them for a good part of an hour." He prayed in his sleep. He fasted.
It is not nearly strong enough to be twisted into thread; and before this can be done, it must pass through three other machines. The first, or "slubber," gives it a very slight twist, just enough to suggest what is coming later, and of course in doing this makes it smaller. The cotton changes its name at every operation, and now it is called "roving."
And watching the stern, solemn lips set, as Bud had often seen the white stern face of Sunset Rock, when the clouds lowered around it, suddenly he saw them relax and break silently, gently, almost imperceptibly into a smile which made the slubber think the parting sunset had fallen there; and Bud gripped the window-sill outside, and swallowed and swallowed at the thing in his throat, and stood tersely wiggling on his strained tendons, and then almost shouted when he saw the smile break all over the old man's face and light up his eyes till the candle's flickering light looked pale, and saw him bow his head and heard him say: "Lord God Almighty ... My God ... My own God ... an' You ain't never gone back on me yet.... 'Bless the Lord all my soul, an' all that is within me; bless His Holy Name!"
The Bishop's great, sympathetic soul went out to the poor fellow, and though he had rather spend the next two miles of Ben Butler's slow journey to church in thinking over his sermon, he never failed, as he termed it, "to pick up charity even on the roadside," and it was pretty to see how the old man would turn loose his crude histrionic talent to amuse the slubber.
To-day, just outside of the church Ben Butler had been hitched up and the Bishop sat in the old buggy. Bud Billings stood by holding the bit, stroking the old horse's neck and every now and then striking a fierce attitude, saying "Whoa whoa suh!" As usual, Ben Butler was asleep. "Turn him loose, Bud," said the old man humoring the slubber "I've got the reins an' he can't run away now.
At his little cottage gate stood Bud Billings, the best slubber in the cotton mill. Bud never talked to any one except the Bishop; and his wife, who was the worst Xanthippe in Cottontown, declared she had lived with him six months straight and never heard him come nearer speaking than a grunt.
Billings; her brother, also a slubber, had arrived early, but had scarcely taken two delightful, exquisite drinks before she came on the scene, her eyes flashing, her hair disheveled, and her hand playing familiarly with something under her apron. Her presence threw them into a panic. "Mine Gott!" said Billy, turning pale. "Eet es Meeses Billings an' her crockery."
The slubber never spoke, but glanced at his wife, who stood glaring at him. Then she broke out in a thin, drawling, daring, poor-white voice a ring of impertinence and even a challenge in it: "I'll tell you'uns what's the matter with Bud. Bud Billings is got what most men needs when they begin to raise sand about their vittels for nothin'. I've busted a plate over his head."
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