"Yes, she's here! I knew all the facts before she told me. Mr. Delane? He's on his way back to New York. Left on the six-ten. Charged me to present his regrets and farewells to you and Phyllis. I thought it best for him to know and to go. Yes, we're coming right home to dress. Mr. King will take Mr. Delane's place at the table. We'll make a clean breast of the whole business. Brace up and eat your crow with a smiling face. I'll make a little speech and present Mr. and Mrs. King to our friends at the end of it. Oh, now, cut out the sobbing and leave this unfinished business to me and don't worry. We'll be home in three minutes."
CHAPTER EIGHT
In Which Judge Crooker Delivers a Few Opinions
The pride of Bingville had fallen in the dust! It had arisen and gone on with soiled garments and lowered head. It had suffered derision and defeat. It could not ever be the same again. Sneed and Snodgrass recovered, in a degree, from their feeling of opulence. Sneed had become polite, industrious and obliging. Snodgrass and others had lost heavily in stock speculation through the failure of a broker in Hazelmead. They went to work with a will and without the haughty independence which, for a time, had characterized their attitude. The spirit of the Little Shepherd had entered the hearts and home of Emanuel Baker and his wife. Pauline and the baby were there and being tenderly loved and cared for. But what humility had entered that home! Phyllis and her husband lived with her parents, Gordon having taken a humble place in the mill. He worked early and late. The Bings had made it hard for him, finding it difficult to overcome their resentment, but he stood the gaff, as they say, and won the regard of J. Patterson although Mrs. Bing could never forgive him.
In June, there had been a public meeting in the Town Hall addressed by Judge Crooker and the Reverend Mr. Singleton. The Judge had spoken of the grinding of the mills of God that was going on the world over.
"Our civilization has had its time of trial not yet ended," he began. "Its enemies have been busy in every city and village. Not only in the cities and villages of France and Belgium have they been busy, but in those of our own land. The Goths and Vandals have invaded Bingville. They have been destroying the things we loved. The false god is in our midst. Many here, within the sound of my voice, have a god suited to their own tastes and sins—an obedient, tractable, boneless god. It is my deliberate opinion that the dances and costumes and moving pictures we have seen in Bingville are doing more injury to Civilization than all the guns of Germany. My friends, you can do nothing worse for my daughter than deprive her of her modesty and I would rather, far rather, see you slay my son than destroy his respect for law and virtue and decency.
"The jazz band is to me a sign of spiritual decay. It is a step toward the jungle. I hear in it the beating of the tom-tom. It is not music. It is the barbaric yawp of sheer recklessness and daredevilism, and it is everywhere.
"Even in our economic life we are dancing to the jazz band and with utter recklessness. American labor is being more and more absorbed in the manufacture of luxuries—embroidered frocks and elaborate millinery and limousines and landaulets and rich upholstery and cord tires and golf courses and sporting goods and great country houses—so that there is not enough labor to provide the comforts and necessities of life.