April 3. I am beset with deacons lately. Deacon Richards has been here for an hour, and he has left me so restless that I may as well try to write myself into calmness.
Deacon Richards never seems so big as when he stands talking with me, looking down on the top of my head, with his great bald forehead looming above his keen eyes like a mountain-top. I always get him seated as soon as I can, and he likes to sit in Father's wide arm-chair. One of the things that I like best about him is that, brusque and queer as he is, he never takes that seat until he has been especially asked. Then as he sits down he says always, with a little softening of his great voice,—
"This was your father's chair."
He has never been out of Tuskamuck a fortnight, I dare say; but there is something about this simple speech, ready for it as I of course always am, that almost brings the tears to my eyes. He is country born and country bred, but the delicacy of the courtesy underlying his brusqueness is pure gold. What nonsense it is for Cousin Mehitable to insist that we are too countrified to have any gentlemen! She does not appreciate the old New England stock.
What Deacon Daniel wanted I could not imagine, but while we were talking of the weather and the common things of the day I could see that he was preparing to say something. He has a wonderful smile when he chooses to show it. It always reminds me of the picture one sees sometimes of a genial face peering from behind a glum mask. When I teased him about the vestry fires, he only grinned; but his grin is to his smile as the smell of peppermint to that of a rose. He amused me by his comments of Aunt Naomi.
"She runs after gossip," he said, "just as a kitten runs after its tail. It doesn't mean anything, but it must do something."
"She is a shrewd creature," I answered. "It is absurd enough to compare anybody so decorous to a kitten."
"Aunt Naomi's nobody's fool," was his response. "She sent me here to-night."
"Sent you here?" I echoed.
His face grew suddenly grave.