"About you and George Weston," she responded, nodding her head emphatically; "but if you don't know where he is, that's the whole of it. Good-day."
She was gone before I could gather my wits to tell her that the news could make no difference to Tom. In discussing my separation from George I suppose the village gossips—But I will not be unkind because I am unhappy. I know, and know with sincere pain, that Deacon and Mrs. Webbe believe that I could have saved Tom if I had been willing to marry him. I have cared for Tom from girlhood, and I am fond of him now, in spite of all that has happened to show how weak he is; but it would be wicked for him to be allowed to suppose the breaking of my engagement makes any difference in our relations. He cannot be written to, however, so I need not trouble.
February 10. Miss West has gone back to Franklin, but I do not see that this makes any especial difference to me. Aunt Naomi told me this afternoon, evidently thinking that I should wish to hear it, and evidently, too, trying not to let me see that she regarded it as more than an ordinary bit of news. I only wonder how long it will be before George will follow her. Oh, I do hope she will make him happy!
February 12. The consequence of my being of no religion seems to be that I am regarded as a sort of neutral ground by persons of all religions, where they may air their theological troubles. Now it is a Catholic who asks advice. Perhaps I had better set up as a consulting something or other. Mediums are the only sort of female consulting things that I think of, and they are so far from respectable that I could not be a medium; but I shall have to invent a name to call myself by, if this goes much further.
This time it is Rosa. Rosa is as devout a little superstitious body as I ever saw. She firmly believes all that her church teaches her, and she believes all sorts of queer things besides. I wonder sometimes that her small mind, which never can remember to lay the table properly, can hold in remembrance all the droll superstitions she shiveringly accepts. Perhaps the reason why she is so inefficient a servant, and is so constantly under the severe blight of Hannah's awful disapproval, is that her mental faculties are exhausted in remembering signs and omens. I've no right to make fun of her, however, for I don't like to spill salt myself!
The conundrum which Rosa brings to me is not one which it is easy to handle. She believes that her church has the power of eternal life and death over her, and she wishes, in defiance of her church's prohibition, to marry a divorced man. She declares that unless she can marry Ran Gargan her heart will be broken into the most numerous fragments, and she implores me to devise a method by which she can accomplish the difficult feat of getting the better of the church.
"Sure, Miss Privet," she said in the most naïve way in the world, "you're that clever that ye could invint a way what would get round Father O'Rafferty; he's no that quick at seein' things."
I suspect, from something the child let fall, that Hannah, with genuine righteous hatred of the Scarlet Woman, had urged Rosa to fly in the face of her church, and marry Ran. Hannah would regard it as a signal triumph of grace if Rosa could be so far persuaded to disobey the tenets of Catholicism. I can understand perfectly Hannah's way of looking at the matter; but I have no more against Rosa's church than I have against Hannah's, so this view does not appeal to me.
"Rosa," I said, "don't you believe in your church?"
She broke into voluble protestations of her entire faithfulness, and seemed inclined to feel that harm might come to her from some unseen malevolence if such charges were made so as to be heard by spying spirits.