“I have spoken to my wife,” he said, “and—”
“If you will pardon me for one minute, Mr. Dean,” said Mrs. Hardcome, interrupting him. “I do not wish to have any false impressions. I do not want my husband blamed, if there is any blame. I want it understood that I insisted that he ask for this apology. I am not the woman to have my husband called a—called untruthful without doing something about it. It is not for me to say that plenty of us thought you made a mistake when you chose a wife, that is neither here nor there. A man marries as he pleases. We don't ask anything unreasonable. If Mrs. Dean will apologize—”
Little 'Thusia, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, looked up at David with wistful eagerness. David, stern enough now, shook his head.
“I have spoken to my wife,” he said, “and I have her assurance that she has never said anything whatever in the least reflecting on Mr. Hardcome's veracity. Neither she nor I can say more.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Mrs. Hardcome in a shocked tone, glancing at her husband as if to say: “So she is lying about this too!” Mr. Hardcome arose and took up his hat.
“We came in a most forgiving spirit, Brother Dean, feeling sure, from what you told me, that an apology would be given without quibble. We wished to avoid all anger and quarreling. If we begin a dispute as to what Mrs. Dean said or did not say we cannot tell what unpleasantness may result. I am taking this stand not to protect myself, but to protect others in our church who may be similarly attacked. We wish Mrs. Dean to apologize.”
“Mrs. Dean cannot apologize for what she has not done.”
There was no mistaking David's tone. If he was angry he hid his anger; he was stating an unchangeable fact.
When he and 'Thusia were alone again she cried in his arms; she told him it would have been better if he had let her apologize—that she did not care, she would rather apologize a thousand times than make trouble for him—but David was firm. Old Sam Wiggett, on the way home, told the Hardcomes they had been fools; that they had been offered all they had a right to ask. It was not, however, his quarrel. Mrs. Hardcome was the offended party, and Mrs. Hardcome would hear of nothing less than an apology.
In a week or less the church was plunged into all the mean pettiness of a church quarrel. The black prunella gaiters and the slip of paper with the shoe size were, while not forgotten, almost lost in the slimy mass of tattle and chatter. James Cruser in a day changed from a partisan of the Hardcomes to a bitter enemy, because Mrs. MacDorty told Mrs. Cruser that Mrs. Hardcome had said Mr. Cruser was trying to befriend both sides and was double-faced. Ned Long, looming as the leader of the Hardcome faction, told of a peculiar mortgage old James P. Wardop had—he said—extorted from Widow Wilmot, and Mr. Wardop became the staunchest supporter of David, although he had always said David was the worst preacher a man ever sat under. It was—“and she's a nice one to stick up for the Deans when everybody knows”—and—“but what else can you expect from a man like him, who was mean enough to”—and so on.