Mrs. Wopp rose from her chair and seating herself on the sofa beside her husband took his thin hand in her substantial one, squeezing it openly.
Out of the tail of her eye Betty noted this little touch of sentiment and was much impressed.
“Be keerful how you shoot that checker Betty or we’re goin’ to git beat,” admonished Moses. He found himself opposed to no mean antagonists.
Awakened to the fact of her son’s existence and perhaps as an antidote to her unusual display of sentiment, Mrs. Wopp spoke rather sharply. “Moses, time you an’ Betty was in bed. You won’t want to git up in the mornin’ an’ milk the cows.” Later left alone in the lower part of the house she stood arms akimbo in the middle of the kitchen gazing at the door through which Nell Gordon had just departed. Shaking her head she said mysteriously, “I kalkerlate as how things is a-settin’ in that way.”
CHAPTER VII.—THE LITTLE CHURCH IN THE COULEE.
From the lower slopes of the Cedar Hills issued many wide wooded ravines. Of these none were prettier than Spring Coulee which even in winter retained its attractiveness, having a goodly sprinkling of evergreen trees among the poplars and cottonwoods lining its sides. A grassy level formed the bottom of the coulee. Through the centre of this a little crystal-clear stream, rising in the hills behind and swelled by an occasional spring which gushed from the sides of the ravine, danced over its pebbly bed to join Berry Creek a mile away.
The coulee was a sheltered nook when bitter winds swept the higher grounds above; it was cool when scorching heat yellowed the grasses of the plain.
So a little church had been built there. The four walls of peeled logs carefully chinked with plaster were now grey and weathered. Inside of the building the red-draped altar, pulpit and reading-desk occupied at least one-third of the available space. There were pews to seat a score of people and behind these was a large heater. The uneven walls were whitewashed. In the windows, three on each side, were alternate blue and white panes of glass.
Mr. Wells the clergyman was of English birth, very conservative and inclined to be shy. He was unusually tall with broad shoulders. Mrs. Wopp once said of him, “When Mr. Wells gits his gownd on, he’s the hull lan’scape.” The deeply pious lady seldom criticized things ecclesiastical; but she had “feelin’s that ef Ebenezer Wopp bed of took to larnin’ like his Mar wished, he’d of looked amazin’ well in that pulpit, better nor Mr. Wells.”
One brilliant Sunday Mr. Wells paced up and down in the sunshine before his little church. An ardent lover of nature he was admiring the beautiful shades of the foliage on either hand and the gorgeous masses of golden-rod that lifted feathery heads to the sun. Presently seeing two or three vehicles approaching he retired into the church.