"What ye mean, A'gusta?" Grinnell said at length. "Kase I 'lowed I'd cut thar ears? I ain't foolin'. Kem meddlin' about remarkin' on our chill'n agin, I'll show 'em."
Augusta looked at him in exasperation. "I ain't keerin' ef all the Purdees war deef," she remarked, inhumanly, "but what war them words ye sent fur a message ter Purdee?—'bout pridin' on what ain't theirn."
Grinnell in his turn looked at her—but dubiously. However much a man is under the domination of his wife, he is seldom wholly frank. It is in this wise that his individuality is preserved to him. "I war jes wantin' ter know ef them words war on the rocks," he said with a disingenuousness worthy of a higher culture.
She received this with distrust. "I kin tell ye now—they ain't," she said, discriminatingly; "Purdee's words don't sound like them."
"Waal, now, what's the differ?" he demanded, with an indignation natural enough to aspiring humanity detecting a slur upon one's literary style.
"Waal—" she paused as she knelt down to feed the fire, holding the fragrant chips in her hand; the flame flickered out and lighted up her reflective eyes while she endeavored to express the distinction she felt: "Purdee's words don't sound ter me like the words of a man sech ez men be."
Grinnell wrinkled his brows, trying to follow her here.
"They sound ter me like the words spoke in a dream—the pernouncings of a vision." Mrs. Grinnell fancied that she too had a gift of Biblical phraseology. "They sound ter me like things I hearn whenst I war a-hungered arter righteousness an' seekin' religion, an' bided alone in the wilderness a-waitin' o' the Sperit."
"'Gusta!" suddenly exclaimed her husband, with the cadence of amazed conviction, "ye b'lieve the lie o' that critter, an' that he reads the words o' the Lord on the rock!"
She looked up a little startled. She had been unconscious of the circuitous approaches of credence, and shared his astonishment in the conclusion.