“Well, now,” drawled Mr. Thompson, running his hand through his wild head of hair—the hair that gave him his nickname of “Haystack”—“I don’t know but there might be something in that. He sure has got a lot of ginger in him, ‘the power of the Lord,’ he calls it, and I reckon maybe that’s what it is. Anyway, as you insinuate, Zalie, the Seven Sleepers would have had a hard time of it trying to keep up their slumbers anywhere around his neighborhood.”
“And then Mrs. Summers,” went on Azalea breathlessly; “think what she would mean to the church! She’s so lively, you know, and so interested in everyone—sorry for them when she ought to be, and happy with them all other times.”
“Sharin’ their sorrows an’ their joys with ’em, I reckon you mean, daughter.”
“Yes; and the baby—”
“Of course, the baby! He’d be a drawin’ card to any congregation.”
“Oh, Mr. Thompson, if I could have that baby around I’d—”
“Yes?”
“I’d—I’d be good all the rest of my days.”
“Be a practicin’ Christian, eh? Well, as you say, Summers is a mighty fetching man—don’t know of any with more—well, more radiation. I reckon I’d better mention him to the bretherin. Perhaps the bishop would hear to his being moved up this a-way—particularly if I told him you was wantin’ to play with the baby.”
Azalea never cared how much fun her kind old Haystack made of her. He had followed her over mountains and through valleys, in sun and rain, in a certain terrible episode of her life, when she had been stolen away from Mrs. McBirney and all but forced back into her hateful life with a traveling show, and she let him joke and fleer all he pleased, knowing him, as she did, for one of her staunchest friends.