“You don’t think you’ll catch cold?” suggested Thyrza.
“Not if your father preaches about Hell,” said the old lady.
“If you’re coming to mock, mamma,” her son interposed, “I can’t help feeling it would be better if you stopped away.”
“Hoity-toity, Master Joshua,” the old lady chuckled.
What the chief apostle thought about his wife’s intention did not transpire, for he was so deaf nowadays that his family considered it wiser not to apprise him of the sensational news. He would probably never understand what they were trying to tell him, but if he should, the nervous shock might easily render him as mute as he was deaf, to the detriment of his weekly discourse, which was the delight of the older Peculiars, flavoured as it was with the brimstone and sulphur of the sect’s early days. The chief apostle, no doubt partly on account of his pyrotechnical knowledge, could conjure hellish visions against any preacher in the land.
There was some discussion about who should drive to chapel in the Fuller brougham, a dreadful old conveyance looking like a large bootblack’s box, which had been picked up cheap at the sale of a deceased widow’s effects. Either Achsah or Thyrza usually accompanied their father. There was no room for a third person when Mr. Fuller and his beard were inside.
“Don’t disturb yourselves,” said Mrs. Fuller. “I’ve sent the boy to fetch a fly from the hotel. Bram can be my beau.”
When she and her grandson were driving off together, she turned to him and said:
“Now what is the reason for having dragged me out in this musty fly on a Sunday morning?”
Her regard was so humorous and candid that the boy surrendered his suspicion and confided to her what he had prepared for the apostles.