“Why, Aurely, hesh up,” exclaimed her husband, startled from his wonted leniency. “I hev never hearn ye talk in sech a key,—yer voice sounds plumb out o' tune. I be plumb sorry, Jube, ez I spoke ter you uns 'bout a meracle at all. But I frar consider'ble nettled by yer words, ye see,—'kase I know I be a powerful, lazy, shif'less cuss——”
“Ye know a lie, then,” his helpmate interrupted promptly.
“Why, Aurely, hesh up,—ye—ye—woman, ye!” he concluded injuriously. Then resuming his remarks to Kennedy, “I know I do fool away a deal of my time with the fiddle——”
“The sound of it is like bread ter me,—
“I couldn't live without it,” interposed the unconquered Aurelia. “Sometimes it minds me o' the singin' o' runnin' water in a lonesome place. Then agin it minds me o' seein' sunshine in a dream. An' sometimes it be sweet an' high an' fur off, like a voice from the sky, tellin' what no mortial ever knowed before,—an' then it minds me o' the tune them angels sung ter the shepherds abidin' in the fields. I couldn't live without it.”
“Woman, hold yer jaw!” Basil proclaimed comprehensively. Then, renewing his explanation to Kennedy, “I kin see that I don't purvide fur my fambly ez I ought ter do, through hatin' work and lovin' to play the fiddle.”
“I ain't goin' ter hear my home an' hearth reviled.” Aurelia laid an imperative hand on her husband's arm. “Ye know ye couldn 't make more out'n sech ground,—though I ain't faultin' our land, neither. We uns hev enough an' ter spare, all we need an' more than we deserve. We don't need ter ax a meracle from the skies ter stay our souls on faith, nor a sign ter prove our grace.”
“Now, now, stop, Aurely!—I declar', Jube I dunno what made me lay my tongue ter sech a word ez that thar miser'ble benighted meracle! I be powerful sorry I hurt yer feelin's, Jube; folks seekin' salvation git mightily mis-put sometimes, an'——”
“I don't want ter hear none o' yer views on religion,” Kennedy interrupted gruffly. An apology often augments the sense of injury. In this instance it also annulled the provocation, for his own admission put Bedell hopelessly in the wrong. “Ez a friend I war argufyin' with ye agin' yer waste o' time with that old fool fiddle. Ye hev got wife an' children, an' yit not so well off in this world's gear ez me, a single man. I misdoubts ef ye hev hunted a day since the craps war laid by, or hev got a pound o' jerked venison stored up fer winter. But this air yer home,”—he pointed upward at a little clearing beginning, as they approached, to be visible amidst the forest,—“an' ef ye air satisfied with sech ez it be, that comes from laziness stiddier a contented sperit.”
With this caustic saying he suddenly left them, the procession standing silently staring after him as he took his way through the woods in the dusky red shadows of the autumnal gloaming.