"Well," breathing a sigh of relief, "I'm glad to hear you say it. I didn't know but that night when I was so relieved and so scared about puttin' him in jail, that I hadn't said more'n I meant. I know I asked him to come and stop here whenever he come to New York, but I didn't mean to live here. I don't see how his church gits along without him so much."
"What's the matter with the Reverend Algernon, Drusilla? I like him. His knowledge of chivalry is—"
"Yes, I know you two pore over them old books and study them tin men, and he seems to be a great comfort to you. But he ain't no comfort to me, John. I guess I'm gittin' old and finicky. I jest can't put my finger on the spot that riles me, but that man riles me. He's always so good and so sort of angelic, and I don't like people who are too good. A man without a few failin's is like underclothes without trimmin', useful but uninterestin', and—and—then, John, he's one of them fussy little men who's always puffin' around and never doin' nothin' worth while, just like a little engine in a switchyard that snorts and puffs and makes a lot of noise pullin' a dump-wagon. And—then, sometimes, I wonder about his religion, he's so narrer, he's got lots of religion but not so much Christianity. He kind of thinks that Heaven's goin' to be made up of him and a few Presbyterians, mainly from his congregation. He kind of seems to think that Heaven's going to be a special place for him where he'll strut around the only rooster and his flock'll foller after singin' praises to him instead of to the Almighty."
"Why, Drusilla, I thought you said when he was so interested in those children of his parish that he ought to be a very good man."
"So he ought to be a good man, and a man's legs ought to reach from his body to the ground but sometimes he has one short leg that don't quite tech. Now the Reverend wasn't interested so much in takin' care of them children as he was in showin' how he could raise money. I remember when I was in the Ladies' Aid of the Presbyterian Church and we made clothes for the heathen, we wasn't so much interested in clothing the heathen as we was that we had a bigger box at the end of the year than the Baptists had. Just as when some of these societies git to raisin' money for the poor or for some new buildin' or something, and they divide their 'raisers' up in bands, the people who ask you for subscriptions fergit what it is for in their hurry to show that they raised more'n some other band."
"I'm afraid, Drusilla, that Mr. Thompson has got on to your nerves."
"I ain't got no nerves, John. I leave that for women with husbands to work 'em off on. I don't know what it is with this preacher. He's a good man accordin' to his lights, but he makes me fidgety a rumblin' away about his work and his creeds and things like a volcano that don't never blow up. I wish he'd let off a little steam once in a while, or spit out a few rocks and stones jest to liven up things a bit."
"I'll admit he is a little bit self-centered."
"What's that? Oh, you mean he's got ingrowin' feelings. Yes, everythin' that he has to do with is big. Why, John, he's the kind of a man that'd entertain his wife by talkin' about his corns, and think it interestin' because they was his'n."
John laughed.