“I’ll give you sixpence for every tintack that goes hard home,” the old lady vowed. “I’d give you a sovereign apiece, if I had the money.”
The congregation of Bethesda seemed to be composed of candle-faced men and fiery-nosed women. The atmosphere literally did stink of respectability, for even scented soap was considered a diabolic weapon. However, in spite of the discouragement that the male Peculiars accorded to the vanity of female dress, the female Peculiars were as well equipped with panniers and bustles as the fashionable females of other sects. In view of what was waiting for them, it was unfortunate for the men that they too did not wear bustles. Bram cast an eye on the apostles’ chairs and whispered to his grandmother that the tintacks were undisturbed. She emitted a low chuckle of approbation such as that with which a parrot welcomes some special effort of ventriloquism by a human being.
The door of the apostolic snuggery opened. Shambling along with an exaggeration of the way he used to shamble as a young man, followed by a trail of dismal men, most of whom had mutton-chop whiskers, came Caleb Fuller making for the chair of Simon Peter—oblivious presumably of the Popish claims thereby implied. The sons of Zebedee were represented by two grocers in partnership—Messrs. Giddy and Dopping. Andrew suitably had an expatriated Scotsman in the person of Maclozen the chemist. Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, and Thomas were earthily represented by Mr. Hunnybum, Mr. Rabjohn, Mr. Campkin, and Mr. Balmey. The seat of James the Less was Joshua Fuller’s. Simon and Jude found their types of apostolic virtue in Mr. Pavitt and Mr. Pead, and finally Mr. Fricker, a sandy-haired young man who walked the shop of Mr. Rabjohn the draper, followed humbly in the rear as the coopted Matthias, hoping no doubt one day to lead the lot as patriarchally as Mr. Fuller was leading them this morning.
“Brethren,” the chief apostle groaned. “I am four score years and two in the sight of the Lord, and my sins are as scarlet.”
“Made with chlorate of potash,” muttered Mrs. Fuller, “so bright a scarlet are they.”
“Brethren, groan with me.”
The Peculiar Children of God groaned lustily.
“Brethren, we will now be seated until one of us shall be moved by the Spirit of the Lord to testify.”
The congregation rustled down into their seats. The apostles sat down firmly and austerely as became leaders of religion. The congregation remained seated. The apostles rose with a unanimous howl, moved not by the Spirit, but by the fifty tintacks, every one of which, by old Mrs. Fuller’s reckoning when she paid over twenty-five shillings to Bram, must have struck hard home.
Of course, there was an investigation into the lamentable affair by the apostolic body of the Peculiar Children of God. The caretaker was invited to explain the presence of all these tintacks on the apostolic chairs. It was idle for the caretaker to deny all knowledge of tintacks, because in the chapel accounts there was an item against her, proving that she had only this week purchased for use in Bethesda a large packet of tintacks. This purchase of tintacks she made no attempt to deny, but she maintained, without her evidence being in the least shaken, that when she last saw the tintacks the bulk of them remained in the cardboard box from which she had taken only two or three to nail down the strips of carpet on the benches where they had come loose. It seemed equally idle for the apostles to accuse such a ramshackle old woman of having deliberately arranged the tintacks as weapons of offence, nor could it seriously be argued that mere carelessness was responsible for leaving them about point upward in groups of four. Some of the older apostles were inclined to blame the Devil for the assault; but the younger members of the apostolic body, reacting to the spirit of intellectual progress that was abroad, could not accept the theory of so literally diabolic a practical joke. Mr. Fricker, the junior apostle, put forward an opinion that the outrage had been committed by members of the Salvation Army, a body which was making considerable and most unwelcome progress in Brigham. The result of the investigation, however, was to leave the horrid business wrapt in mystery, in which costume it would doubtless have remained for ever if that afternoon young Caleb Fuller had not said to his father with a smile of radiant innocence: