“Nevertheless, if they honestly tried, then that very trying was of itself good.”
“Do you think Perfection City will do the good the Pioneers expect, or will something quite different come out of it too?”
“I think Perfection City will be the means of teaching a valuable lesson,” said Brother Green cordially.
“Do you think it is any use to try to change the world and its ideas?”
“If anyone has a truth let him preach it fearlessly. Who can foretell the moment when the world will listen and when it is ready to profit by your example.”
Olive longed to ask him what he thought of Madame, but dared not do so. She felt a little afraid before this simple-minded man, with his fervent, childlike faith and his sad and lonely life. Belief in Perfection City might be his only comfort now, shut off as he was from the joys of home and family, she would do nothing to lessen his belief and make him more lonely still. For what is more lonely than the heart out of which a faith has departed never to return? So she bade him good-bye, and then seeing Aunt Ruby’s chimney giving off the cheerful smoke of habitation, she turned her steps thither. Olive walked slowly along, for it was very hot indeed with a dry suffocating heat that made exertion somewhat irksome, and Diana, the discreet, followed dutifully behind her.
Aunt Ruby, as has been already hinted, had surrounded herself with a large family of chickens of all ages, to whose wants it was her great duty to attend. She had a rare hand for chickens, and could pick up the most spasmodic specimen and turn it upside down and examine it for the gapes without hurting it in the least. Her driving of the hens to roost was an exhibition of the talent of generalship worthy of a wider field. No screamings nor scurryings, no rushings madly hither and thither, took place, and above all no sticks were used in the ceremony: Aunt Ruby merely took her skirts gently at the side in each hand, and said “Shoo! Shoo!” in a soothing voice, while at the same time she slightly oscillated the folds of her skirt. The hens appeared hypnotized by the action, and no matter how eagerly they might be pursuing the afternoon fly, they would at once settle down into a conversational chuck-a-chu and begin forthwith to meander towards the hen-roost.
Aunt Ruby’s numerous hens and chickens were all in the yard and around the wood-pile, seeking in an aimless over-fed fashion after chance insects, when suddenly, without a moment’s warning, the devil was upon them according to the gallinaceous imagination. The devil was possessed of four paws, a most terrifying bark, and a mouth that seemed to the affrighted birds to be on the point of devouring each one especially and individually. The dog flew hither and thither, and so did the chickens, and so did the tail-feathers.
“Diana! Bad dog, down, down!” screamed Olive, rushing to the rescue, while Aunt Ruby with shrill cry and a broom-stick appeared in the door-way. Never before or since did a more tempestuous guest appear at Aunt Ruby’s house. Full a quarter of an hour of gentle “shoo-shooings” to the hens, interspersed with smart whippings to Diana, elapsed before quiet was restored, and the ladies could even begin their visit together. Even then there was a sort of nervous tension on Aunt Ruby’s part, which prevented her thorough enjoyment of the opportunity for a gossip. Her attention was distracted by Diana, who lay with lamb-like docility at Olive’s feet and slept the sleep of the just.
“I wouldn’t keep a dawg roun’ nohow,” said Aunt Ruby eyeing the delinquent sternly. “I’d mos’ as lief hev a rattlesnake. I shouldn’t never sleep easy in my bed won’erin’ an’ won’erin’ what the pesky crittur ’ud do nex’.”