And in their stuffy and secretive little bedrooms that night the Peculiar Children of God talked for hours about the disgraceful amount of leg that those circus women had shown.
“I hear it was extremely suggestive,” said one apostle, smacking his lips with lecherous disapprobation.
“Was it, indeed, my dear?” the dutiful wife replied, thereby offering the man of God an opportunity to enlarge upon the prurient topic before he turned down the gas and got into bed beside her.
“Bram was very naughty to go to the circus, wasn’t he, Aunt Achsah?” young Caleb asked in a tone of gentle sorrow when his pasty-faced aunt leaned over that Monday night to lay her wet lips to his plump pink cheeks.
“Grandpapa was very cross,” Aunt Achsah mournfully replied, evading the direct answer, but implying much by her expression.
“Gran’papa’s not cross with me, is he, auntie?” young Caleb asked with an assumption of fervid anxiety.
“No, my dear child, and I hope that you will never, never make your dear grandfather cross with you.”
“Oh, I won’t, Aunt Achsah,” young Caleb promised, with what Aunt Achsah told Aunt Thyrza was really and truly the smile of one of God’s most precious lambs.
“Thyrza, Thyrza, when that blessed little child smiles like that, nobody could deny him anything. I’m sure his path down this vale of tears will always be smoothed by that angelic smile.”
She was talking to her sister in the passage just outside young Caleb’s bedroom—he had already been separated from his elder brother for fear of corruption—and he heard what she said.