"I'll call you to account for this, sir," said Garnet, moving to go.
"You're lying again," was John's bland reply, and he turned to his seat.
"Why, John," came the mother's sweet complaint, "I wanted to see Brother Garnet."
"Oh, I'm sorry," said the complaisant son.
Garnet paused on the coach's platform to get rid of his tremors. "He'll not tell," he said aloud, the uproar of wheels drowning his voice. "He's too good a Rosemonter to tattle. At first I thought he'd got on the same scent as Cornelius.
"Thank God, that's one thing there's no woman in, anyhow. O me, O me! If that tipsy nigger would only fall off this train and break his neck!
"And now here's this calf to live in daily dread of. O dear, O dear, I ought to a-had more sense. It's all her fault; she's pure brass. They call youth the time of temptation—Good Lord! Why youth's armored from head to heel in its invincible ignorance. O me! Well—I'll pay him for it if it takes me ten years."
John's complacency had faded with the white heat of his anger, and he sat chafing in spirit while his elbow neighbor slept in the shape of an N. Across the car he heard Parson Tombs explaining to the Graves brethren and Sister March that Satan—though sometimes corporeal—and in that case he might be either unicorporeal or multicorporeal—and at other times unicorporeal—as he might choose and providence permit—and, mark you, he might be both at once on occasion—was by no means omnipresent, but only ubiquitous.
Lazarus supposed a case: "He might be in both these cahs at once an' yet not on the platfawm between 'em."
"It's mo' than likely!" said the aged pastor, no one meaning anything sly. Yet to some people a parson's smiling mention of the devil is always a good joke, and the Graves laughed, as we may say. Not so, Sister March; she never laughed at the prince of darkness, nor took his name in vain. She spoke, now, of his "darts."