“A leetle lodomy, drapped in ellum bark tea’s mighty good for it;” and the old lady, satisfied with her catechism, turned her trumpet and her interrogative features toward the others.
Mrs. Bemby remarked having seen mother and the others at church that morning. Mrs. Bailey then took up the thread of the discourse where I had broken it off by entering.
“As I was a saying, sister Bemby,” she resumed, “it does me a sight of good to listen to Brother Weekly’s preaching. He is so searchin’ to the sinners and comfortin’ to the saints. His sermins are well pinted, too, and not writ, neither. I jist know in my soul, d’liver me from a writ sermin.”
“Umph?” said Mrs. Dodge, in a prolonged note of inquiry, levelling her dread instrument on the speaker. Mrs. Bailey very kindly screamed the words into her ear.
“Ah, yes, I knowed ‘twas good this mordn-ing, tho’ I couldn’t hear, for I sorter felt it. Brother Weekly is always powerful in his lastly, and whedn I see old Udncle Jacob Sawney slap Sister Brewer in the back, and old Miss Parkidns twiss her cheer roudn to the wall, and git my Viney here to untie her specks, so she could rub her eyes, I knowed he was a having great freedobm; and thedn he got a leetle louder, and I thought I heerd him say: ‘He’ll meet us at the gate, Hisself;’ and somethidng told me in my heart he meadnt the Lord, and I wadnted to go just thedn, for ‘pears to me I’d be more welcome like ef He told me to come in.”
“Yes,” resumed Mrs. Bailey, without noticing her interruption; “and did you notice, Sister Bemby, how he brought it out about the tares and the wheat. Seems to me, if I was a sinner I couldn’t bear the thought of being sifted out and throwed away like a no ‘count cockle grain.”
“That was uncommon clear, Sister Bailey,” returned Mrs. Bemby, “about putting in the sickle and reaping all together, then sortin’ out the good and bad.”
“That it was, Sister Bemby,” agreed Mrs. Bailey, making a spade out of her tooth brush, and spading up half an ounce of snuff into her mouth.
There was another pause, and I looked uneasily out of the window, to see if I could discover anything of Ben, while Miss Viney rubbed her nose up again, and shot invisible marbles with the idle thumb in her lap.