“Did you say ‘faith’ or ‘nerve’?” Geraldine knew her man thoroughly now.
He looked at her with mock incredulity. “Woman,” he said, “don’t you know that to have faith requires the greatest nerve on earth? Nerve! Phew! Just you try to live in this world on faith alone. Then’s when miracles begin to happen—they just have to!”
“I believe our part of the country will just suit you—the country you are now being predestined to on our predestined money.”
“‘Your reason, most excellent wench! Your exquisite reason!’ That’s almost Shakespeare; so it’s all right.”
“Penn Yan was first settled by a Quakeress, Jemimah Wilkinson, who called herself the Universal Friend. She believed in faith, just as you do——”
“All right; I’ll be a Universal Friend, too.”
“But she put her faith to a severe test,” Geraldine continued; “she announced a day when she would walk on the waters of Lake Keuka as an exhibition to her many disciples. And when they had crowded the shores of the Lake and she had offered a silent prayer and walked to the water’s edge, she turned to her followers and asked them to renew publicly their confession of faith in faith. As a test she asked them to assure her before she should step out on the surface of the water, that they had faith that she could do all she professed in the name of the Lord. They all had absolute faith, they cried. ‘Then,’ said Jemimah, ‘I need not prove aught to ye who believe.’ Having said, she turned from the Lake and went home.”
“Good for Jemimah!” said Richard. “I wager she was a keen one. That was a bully rebuke to all that side-show crowd. But my faith is different. I don’t ask for miracles, since every breath I draw is a miracle. I don’t think about it at all. I have the faith of a dog——”
“What sort of a dog this time?”
The train spun suddenly around a curve, throwing him quite over against the lady.