"There air lots of water left. Be there other babies wantin' it worse than this one?"
She turned half-way round, and faced the wall of white faces, sending the question out in high-pitched tones.
Then Graves spoke with austerity and strength, riding down his anger with a mighty effort.
"You will please take the child from the church. You have your own squatter mission for such as that."
He had forgotten his members—forgotten that he was a man of God. As he bent toward her, he remembered only that she was the girl who had thwarted him, who had won in the squatter fight against his own influence. Tessibel heard the words "squatter" and "mission." It had not occurred to her to take the child there. She looked down upon the little fire-marked face. Would baby Dan live until she could get him there? He might be dead before she could carry him to the inlet and cross the tracks to the young rector's house. Teola had said that the baby would never be with his father without baptism, that even she, his mother, could not see him when she, too, went away. Little Dan, uncleansed, would live far from the bright angels. Her anger rose in a twinkling. She took another backward step, threw the red curls into a mass over her shoulder, and spoke again.
"Air I to take him from the church without the water?"
"Yes."
"I'll be damned if I's a-goin' to take him away," she flung back, panting. "He air so near dead, he air blind—look at his eyes! I says, he air to be sprinkled, he air! If ye won't give the Huly Ghost a chance at him—" Here she stepped forward to the font, flashed a look of hatred at Graves, and suddenly dipped her hand into the water.
"I sprinkles him myself," she ended.
The drops fell upon the livid baby face, dripping down upon the bare feet of the squatter.