A dear, sweet old lady, with a heart full to overflowing with the milk of human kindness, and yet she had unconsciously become a moral stumbling-block to the one person whose happiness she was in every way most desirous of serving.
Poor Mistress Amanda had never found any aid from nature in carrying out her plans, but she was not the woman to relinquish one on that account. She relied upon the aid of chance to bring that proof to Nellie of Peter Weaver's worth, which would make her tolerant of his rationalism.
A poet and a skeptic! Only in the degree which made it necessary for the solitary man, thinking out all things for himself, and philosophizing upon life with the sky and woods for counselors, to reach conclusions that he could connect with the way things had of turning out. Calvinism did not seem to him to connect with the law of duty to your neighbor as it presented itself to his conception; and his theology took this simple formula: bear and forbear as long as you can, and then strike good blows; leaving alone the consequences.
And Nellie was a very mimosa for sensitiveness, as to the sin of differing from one's spiritual advisers. Mistress Amanda looked at her daughter, a translucent opal set between those gilded spurs, her cousins, and reflected upon the pains nature takes to bring about disharmony in families.
As the carriage approached the gates of Benvenew two little darkies raced out and held them wide open, with a special grin and duck for the gentleman on horseback, whose dimes rolled in the dust, sped by the careless, free hand of one who remembered himself an Armstrong, forgetting the preacher. But the set of the preacher was strong in the man. It was apparent at dinner; that excellent dinner where the golden brown turkey at one end of the table was rivaled by the noble ham at the other end, and where corn-pudding, sweet potatoes, and tomatoes in firm, rose-red slices, were reflected in crystal-clear goblets of cut-glass, standing sentinel-like upon napkins of double-wove Barnsley damask, white as sunbleach and rain water could make them.
Armstrong sat at Mistress Amanda's right hand, with Nellie opposite, her hands constantly busy playing over the jellies and entrées set in front of her to serve. Drooping curls half-hid her face, but his eyes dived keenly into the cool, sweet depths of hers when by chance she looked up. And she had the pleasantly fluttered sense of being watched by one curiously sympathetic with her.
"You are like your father," Mistress Amanda was saying. "Like what he was at your age. I met him once at a tournament held over at Purcellville. A pleasant part of the country, and a pleasant time we young people had that day."
"And you was crowned queen o' love and beauty, Mandy," cooed old Mrs. Powell. "I see by your face though, sir, that you don't hold to these fashions?"
"Should I hold to any customs that encourage vanity and display, and un-Christian rivalry?" returned the young preacher. "I understand there is to be a tournament held here in the fall, at Rocky Point. I shall feel it my duty to warn all our young people who have felt the strivings of the Spirit, not to yield to the temptation."