ANN ELIZA.
"Brother Magruder, I will tell you the plain truth," said Morton, rising and speaking with vehemence. "I have been very much struck with the eloquence of Sister Ann Eliza when she leads in prayer or speaks in love-feast. I did not mean to marry anybody. I have always defended the poor and the helpless. She told me her history one day, and I felt sorry for her. I determined to befriend her." Here Morton paused in some embarrassment, not knowing just how to proceed.
"Befriend a woman! That is the most imprudent thing in the world for a minister to do, my dear brother. You cannot befriend a woman without doing harm."
"Well, she wanted help, and I could not refuse to give it to her. She told me that she had refused Bob Holston five times, and that he kept troubling her. I met Bob alone one day, and I remonstrated with him pretty earnestly, and he went all round the country and said that I told him I was engaged to Ann Eliza, and would whip him if he didn't let her alone. What I did tell him was, that I was Ann Eliza's friend, because she had no other, and that I thought, as a gentleman, he ought to take five refusals as sufficient, and not wait till he was knocked down by refusals."
"Why, my brother," said the elder, "when you take up a woman's cause that way, you have got to marry her or ruin her and yourself, too. If you were not a minister you might have a female friend or two; and you might help a woman in distress. But you are a sheep in the midst of—of—wolves. Half the girls on this circuit would like to marry you, and if you were to help one of them over the fence, or hold her bridle-rein for her while she gets on the horse, or talk five minutes with her about the turnip crop, she would consider herself next thing to engaged. Now, as to Sister Ann Eliza, you have given occasion to gossip over the whole circuit."
"Who told you so?" asked Morton, with rising indignation.
"Why, everybody. I hadn't more than touched the circuit at Boggs' Corners till I heard that you were to be married at this very Quarterly Meeting. And I felt a little grieved that you should go so far without any consultation with me. I stopped at Sister Sims's—she's Ann Eliza's aunt I believe—and told her that I supposed you and Sister Ann Eliza were going to require my aid pretty soon, and she burst into tears. She said that if there had been anything between you and Ann Eliza, it must be broken off, for you hadn't stopped there at all on your last round. Now tell me the plain truth, brother. Did you not at one time entertain a thought of marrying Sister Ann Eliza Meacham?"
"I have thought about it. She is good-looking and I could not be with her without liking her. Then, too, everybody said that she was cut out for a preacher's wife. But I never paid her any attention that could be called courtship. I stopped going there because somebody had bantered me about her. I was afraid of talk. I will not deny that I was a little taken with her, at first, but when I thought of marrying her I found that I did not love her as one ought to love a wife—as much as I had once loved somebody else. And then, too, you know that nine out of every ten who marry have to locate sooner or later, and I don't want to give up the ministry. I think it's hard if a man cannot help a girl in distress without being forced to marry her."
"Well, Brother Goodwin, we'll not discuss the matter further," said the elder, who was more than ever convinced by Morton's admissions that he had acted reprehensibly. "I have confidence in you. You have done a great wrong, whether you meant it or not. There is only one way of making the thing right. It's a bad thing for a preacher to have a broken heart laid at his door. Now I tell you that I don't know anybody who would make a better preacher's wife than Sister Meacham. If the case stands as it does now I may have to object to the passage of your character at the next conference."