"What would you have me do about it, darling?" enquired Chapman, submissively.
"Oppose it, my dear!" replied Mrs. Chapman, bowing, and becoming earnest. "Oppose it. You know how to oppose everything, and surely you can oppose this."
This reply troubled Chapman considerably. He had for once found something he would rather encourage than oppose. But he had a motive for his action, as will be seen hereafter.
CHAPTER VII.
THE TOWN MOVED WITH INDIGNATION.
It was less than a week after the scenes we have described in the foregoing chapter took place, that the good sloop Heinrich arrived, having made her weekly voyage to New York and back. A small, ill-favored man, with a very long red beard, and very long red hair, might have been seen stepping ashore, with a book and an umbrella under his arm, and wending his way up the lane, followed by Tite, carrying a corpulent carpet-bag. There was a combative air about the little man, who stared with a pair of small, fierce eyes, through a pair of glaring spectacles at every one he met. He was dressed in a shabby black suit, that hung loosely on his lean figure. This, with a broad, rolling collar, a pair of russet brogans, and a common straw hat, turned up at one side, completed his wardrobe, and gave an odd appearance to the man. Indeed, the gentleman had no taste for the vanities of the world, and parted his hair in the middle to save trouble. The ordinary observer might easily have mistaken him for a school-master out of employment and in distress. That such a man was to upset the settled opinions of a big town, few persons would have believed. Such, however, was this odd-looking little man's mission, and there was no end of new ideas contained in that little bumpy forehead of his.
The new arrival was the much-expected Reverend Warren Holbrook, from Dogtown last. As I have said before, he looked askance and inquisitively at every one he met as he walked up the lane. He bowed, too, and had a smile for all the females; then he enquired the name and condition of those who lived in each house he came to—how many children they had, and whether they were boys or girls. Now he paused and rested on his umbrella when he had reached a bit of high ground, and gazed over Nyack generally, and then over the Tappan Zee. Here was the new field of the great labors before him. How often he had taken Dogtown by the neck and shaken her up severely. The day might come when he would have to take Nyack by the neck and give her a good shaking up, morally and religiously. Mrs. Chapman had written him to say that Nyack was a bad place, secularly and otherwise.
The whole Chapman family (including the big dog) was out at the door to welcome the stranger; and such a warm greeting as he got. Mrs. Chapman assured him that the best in the house had been prepared for him, and that she had got the town in a state of great anxiety to see him. To tell the truth, this busy, bustling woman had been blowing a noisy trumpet for him in advance, and enlisting a large amount of female sympathy by stating that he was preeminent as an advocate of woman's rights in all things.