Chapter XXVIII.
PACIFICATION.
Princess Anne had missed for several days some conspicuous citizens, such as Daniel Custis and wife, Captain Phœbus, Levin Dennis, and the free negro Samson—large components of a small town; but it had also gained what everybody admitted to be the most beautiful woman in the place except Mrs. Vesta Milburn—the brown-eyed, tall, roguish niece of Meshach Milburn, whom Vesta had made a lady of in externals, corrected some of her faults, such as the sniffle, and was daily teaching her the mysteries of grammar and address, aided by the rector of the parish, whose heart was roused to partial animation again by the young visitor.
Loyally William Tilghman had pressed his friendship on Vesta's semi-social husband, determined to like him, and finding small resistance there, and, happily, no suspicion; and this was so grateful to Vesta that she indulged the hope that her cousin and late lover would find compensation for her loss in Rhoda Holland.
Love came easily on as a topic of talk where Rhoda, with her unconventional preference for that subject, introduced it.
"Mr. William"—she had got that far towards the inevitable "William"—said Rhoda, one evening at Teackle Hall, as they sat in the library, "do preachers love jus' like other folks? Misc Somers say they is drea'fle sly-boots. She say thar was a preacher down yer to Girdle Tree Hill that preached the Meal-an-the-Yum was a-goin' to happen right off."
"Millennium," suggested Tilghman.
"Maybe so. Misc Somers call it 'the Meal-an-the-Yum,' I thought. Anyway, they was all goin' to rise, right off, an' he with 'em. Lord sakes! they had frills put on thar night-gowns to rise in. An' the night before they was a-goin' up, that ar scamp run away with a widder an' her darter, jilted the widder an' married the darter; an' they couldn't rise at Girdle Tree Hill caze the preacher wa'n't thar, an' they didn't know when."
"And I suppose Mrs. Somers tells it on him?" William Tilghman added.