“I will first know that there is wrong conduct,” says I--“Miss Morton’s face is just as innocent as a baby’s, and I hain’t a goin’ to mistrust any evil out of them pretty brown eyes, till I am obleeged to.”
“Well, you will have to believe it,” says Ophelia Dagget--“and there shall be somethin’ done about it as sure as my name is Ophelia Dagget.”
“Let him that is without sin amongst you cast the first stone,” says Miss Squire Edwards--a better Baptist women never lived than she is.
“Yes,” says I in almost piercen’ tones, “which of us is good enough to go into the stun business? Even supposin’ it was true, which I never will believe on earth, which of us could stun her on gospel grounds?--who will you find that is free from all kind of sin?” and as I spoke, remorseful thoughts almost knocked against my heart, how I had scolded Josiah the night before for goin’ in his stockin feet.
“I never see a female women yet that I thought was perfect, and yet how willin’ they are to go to handlin’ these stuns--why wimmen fling enough stuns at each other every day, to make a stun wall that would reach from pole to pole.”
Just at this minute the hired girl come in, and said supper was on the table, and we all went out to eat it. Miss Jones said there wasn’t anything on the table fit to eat, and she was afraid we couldn’t make out--but it was a splendid supper, fit for the Zaar of Rushy.
We hadn’t more’n got up from the supper table, and got back into the parlor, when we heard a knock onto the front door, and Miss Jones went and opened it, and who of all the live world should walk in but the minister! The faces of the wimmen as he entered would have been a study for Michael Angelico, or any of them old painters. Miss Jones was that flustrated that she asked him the first thing to take his bunnet off, and then she bethought herself, and says she, ‘How’s your Ma?’ before she had sat him a chair or anything. But he looked as pleasant and composed as ever, though his eyes kinder laughed. And he thanked her and told her he left his mother the day before a good deal better, and then he turned to Maggy Snow, and says he,
“I have come after you Miss Maggy, my wife come home this mornin’ and was so anxious to see you that I told her as I had business past your house this afternoon, I would call for you as I went home, and your mother told me you were here. I think I know why she wants to see you so very much now. She is so proud of our boy, she can’t wait till----”