“Hey? She walks out with Abner Preep?”
“No—not thet! I’ve sot my face agin thet. But I know she wouldn’t give him up, thet’s sartin.”
Ruth’s harpsichord again possessed the silence, trilling forth “Doxology” with an unwarranted presto movement. Mrs. Strang went on: “The time o’ your last muddin’ frolic she danced with him all night e’en a’most and druv off home in his sleigh, an’ there ain’t a quiltin’ party or a candy-pullin’ or an infare but she contrives to meet him.”
“Scendalous!” exclaimed the deacon.
“I don’t see nothin’ scendalous!” replied Mrs. Strang, indignantly. “The young man wants to marry her genuine. ’Pears to me your darter is more scendalous a’most, playin’ hymns as if they were hornpipes. I didn’t arx my folks if I might meet my poor Davie; we went to dances and shows together, and me a Baptist, God forgive me! And Harriet’s jest like that—the hussy—she takes arter her mother.”
“But if you were to talk to her!” urged the deacon.
Mrs. Strang shook her head.
“She’d stab herself sooner.”
“Stab herself sooner’n give up Abner Preep!”
“Sooner’n marry any one else.”