"Not yet," said Pinkey, seizing the bridle, "I want to talk to you." And he sat down again, holding fast to her bridle-rein.
"What is it?" asked Ann Eliza, subdued by a sense of helplessness.
"Do you think, Sister Meacham," he said in a canting tone, "that you are doing just right? Is not there something in your life that is wrong? With all your praying, and singing, and shouting, you are a wicked woman."
Ann Eliza's resentment now took fire. "Who are you, that talk in this way? You are a robber, and you know it! If you don't repent you will be lost! Seek religion now. You will soon sin away your day of grace, and what an awful eternity—"
Miss Meacham had fallen into this hortatory vein, partly because it was habitual with her, and consequently easier in a moment of confusion than any other, and partly because it was her forte and she thought that these earnest and pathetic exhortations were her best weapons. But when she reached the words "awful eternity," Pinkey cried out sneeringly:
"Hold up, Ann Eliza! You don't run over me that way. I'm bad enough, God knows, and I'm afraid I shall find my way to hell some day. But if I do I expect to give you a civil good morning on my arrival, or welcome you if you get there after I do. You see I know all about you, and it's no use for you to glory-hallelujah me."
Ann Eliza did not think of anything appropriate to the occasion, and so she remained silent.
"I hear you have got young Goodwin on your hooks, now, and that you mean to marry him against his will. Is that so?"
"No, it isn't. He proposed to me himself."
"O, yes! I suppose he did. You made him!"