“Too much contact with Schlotzensmelters and Nelsons!” Elizabeth commented mentally.
“Each man has his personal relation to God to consider,” Mahala was saying. “He wishes other men to respect his religion—to that same degree let him consider and reverence the religion of his neighbours.”
“Campbellites slopping in a tank! Popery and bigotism!” hissed Elizabeth in her seething brain.
“Each man gives his party affiliations deep study and believes wholeheartedly in his views,” the girl was saying. “Why should he deem his neighbour less interested, less capable of deciding for himself?”
“Democrats and Populists!” sweated Elizabeth, unsparingly kneading Mahlon’s defenceless side.
“There are even those among us not willing to allow our neighbours to choose which newspaper they will take, what books they will read, what clothing they shall wear——” smooth as oil Mahala flowed on, but each phrase was a blow, each idea revolutionary.
“Why should men be such bigots as to require that other men shall conform to their ideas before they will grant them intellectual freedom?” cried the girl.
“I’ll show you, Miss!” said Elizabeth.
But, hark! What was that? The church in a storm of applause, in the midst of a speech! Unprecedented! It kept on and on. Suddenly, Elizabeth found herself blistering her palms against each other. She looked at Mahlon, to find him doing the same thing. Of all the world! How they did applaud that slip of a girl! And those were some of the very things Elizabeth had suppressed, or thought she had.
Mahala was back on the track now. Her excursion had been the triumph of the Spellmans’ life, but limply wet, exhausted, and secretly outraged, Elizabeth weakly prayed that Mahala would attempt no further improvisation. That prayer was answered. The Defense having been granted a brain as well as a body, Mahala was constrained to close as she was expected. Mahlon drew a deep breath and used his handkerchief. To him, as Mahala took her seat, with the sacred edifice rocking in the gust of approval, she was a sacred thing. Whatever she did came out right. She was a perfect picture, a white flower. That recalled him to the fact that, shrouded in tissue paper between his knees, was a horribly expensive basket that his pride had compelled him to order for her from the nearest city. She had not had a peep of it. Through the tissue enfolding it, Mahlon could feel the coolness that it distilled around his feet, since the generous applause had warmed them. From the corner of his eye he was watching the approaching ushers as Mahala finished and the organ swelled triumphantly to proclaim that the first great public event in the lives of these youngsters had been passed with credit to each and every one of them.