“Where did you get this book?” she asked, turning her twinkling little eyes on Waldo. “I wish that my legs may be as thin as an Englishman’s if it isn’t one of your father’s. He had more sins than all the Kaffers in Kafferland, for all that he pretended to be so good all those years, and to live without a wife because he was thinking of the one that was dead! As though ten dead wives could make up for one fat one with arms and legs!” cried Tant Sannie, snorting.
“It was not my father’s book,” said the boy savagely. “I got it from your loft.”
“My loft! my book! How dare you?” cried Tant Sannie.
“It was Em’s father’s. She gave it me,” he muttered more sullenly.
“Give it here. What is the name of it? What is it about?” she asked, putting her finger upon the title.
“Dear Lord!” said Tant Sannie, “cannot one hear from the very sound what an ungodly book it is! One can hardly say the name. Haven’t we got curses enough on this farm?” cried Tant Sannie, eloquently; “my best imported Merino ram dying of nobody knows what, and the short-horn cow casting her two calves, and the sheep eaten up with the scab and the drought? And is this a time to bring ungodly things about the place, to call down the vengeance of Almighty God to punish us more? Didn’t the minister tell me when I was confirmed not to read any book except my Bible and hymn-book, that the devil was in all the rest? And I never have read any other book,” said Tant Sannie with virtuous energy, “and I never will!”
Waldo saw that the fate of his book was sealed, and turned sullenly on his heel.
“So you will not stay to hear what I say!” cried Tant Sannie. “There, take your Polity-gollity-gominy, your devil’s book!” she cried, flinging the book at his head with much energy.
It merely touched his forehead on one side and fell to the ground.
“Go on,” she cried; “I know you are going to talk to yourself. People who talk to themselves always talk to the devil. Go and tell him all about it. Go, go! run!” cried Tant Sannie.
But the boy neither quickened nor slackened his pace, and passed sullenly round the back of the wagon-house.
Books have been thrown at other heads before and since that summer afternoon, by hands more white and delicate than those of the Boer-woman; but whether the result of the process has been in any case wholly satisfactory, may be questioned. We love that with a peculiar tenderness, we treasure it with a peculiar care, it has for us quite a fictitious value, for which we have suffered. If we may not carry it anywhere else we will carry it in our hearts, and always to the end.