"The constable is slack again. It has been weeks since we suffered open sodden drunkenness in the streets. I do regret it should have happened on the evening of your arrival. Take a lesson from it if you have the wit. Benjamin, one thing you and Reuben must understand: in all the time the Lord hath permitted me to dwell here——"
"Yaphoo! If I a'n't a futtering he-goat of Hell there a'n't no name for me. Behold, I'm the brazen serpent of the wilderness—yaphoo! Look on me, you pocky smock-tumblers, you pot-walloping get of Belial, on my bosom I got the bleeding bloody cross, only it slipped some, there's some men fail at everything, can't even carry a cross right side up and be God-damned to you, s's I!" In panic fear of laughing, Reuben coughed, and tried to look out the window so that his back would be turned to his grandmother. "You harken unto me, you jolly whoremasters, you cuckoldy cods and Roundheads too, harken how I pickled my wounds in the juice of the vine! Why, bugger 'em all, s's I, and you too—a'n't I meek and lowly? Yaphoo! A'n't I crushed to the dust nor can't sink no further down, a piss-poor toad under the heel of the Almighty? Look down! Don't I stay alive because Hell won't have me? You broke my heart, Lord, you fried my brains, now scourge me with a bull's pizzle, I won't say nothing. Yaphoo!" The voice was moving away. Reuben prayed that Ben would not speak. "Ah, Lord, look down!" Yes, it was fainter, muffled, as if walls intervened; Jesse must have turned a corner of the street. "Out of the deeps, O Lord—yaphoo!..."
Precariously, Reuben said: "I think he's gone, Grandmother."
She nodded grimly, letting out her breath in a shaken sigh. "I trust so. Some idle scum of the river-front.... In all the time the Lord hath permitted me to dwell here, I have tried to maintain my house as, let us say, a small imperfect Zion, if that be not vanity. I will tolerate no ungodliness, Benjamin, Reuben—no foul speech, no unconsidered acts. You'll never find me unkind or failing in understanding, but the walking is strict. You will be at meeting without fail on Sabbath and Lecture Days. These are wicked times. The faith is everywhere assailed, every day bringeth new inventions. See to it that I find you on the side of the Saints. Well, you must be weary and hungry. Jonas will see to your supper and show you to your room."
They were dismissed.
No more music came from Jesse Plum.
Jonas was waiting, and led the boys to the kitchen where his rawboned wife Anna had kept a supper warm. Anna Lloyd sniffed more than she spoke, through a ribbon of nose overhanging the shrunken area where most of her teeth had been lost. Neatly dressed and clean, perhaps she would never seem so, kitchen smoke and years of drudgery having found permanent lodgment in her wrinkles. She was incurious about Deerfield and the boys; her few questions were aimed at some region not well defined because of a cast in her eye.
Here in his own domain Jonas laid aside solemnity, straddling a chair, carelessly pawing Anna's scrawny bottom now and then, a caress such as he might have granted to a useful dog.
Reuben pushed the lukewarm stew around on his trencher for politeness' sake. He noticed that Ben was actually eating the stuff and emptying his mug of thin beer. Then Jonas recovered his mantle of stately gloom and guided them back upstairs to a room of their own. It was at the rear of the house overlooking a yard; except for Grandmother Cory's, probably the best room in the house. Jonas lit a candle and padded away.
The room contained another four-poster with a dark blue canopy. The small-paned windows shone brilliantly clean, the furniture stood just so, defying any sinfulness of disorder. A framed sampler on the wall aimed its message so that anyone retiring or rising must be advised: I will also vex the hearts of many people, when I shall bring thy destruction among the nations, into the countries which thou hast not known. Ezekiel xxxii; 9.