“We might go to see him together,” he said. “It’s an everlastin’ purty place, Digby.”
“I’d rayther see Halifax,” said Mrs. Strang, weakly. In the whirl of her thoughts Ruth’s tinkling tune seemed the only steady thing in the universe. Oh, if Ruth would only play something bearing on the situation, so that Heaven might guide her in this sudden and fateful crisis!
“Halifax, too, some day,” said the deacon, encouragingly, laying his disengaged hand caressingly on her hair. “We’ll go to the circus together.”
She withdrew herself spasmodically from his touch.
“Don’t ask me!” she cried; “you’re Presbyterian!”
“Well, and what was your last husban’?”
“Don’t ask me. Harriet and Matt air ongodly ’nough as it is; they’ve neither on ’em found salvation.”
“Well, I won’t interfere with your doctrines, you bet. Freedom o’ conscience, I allus thinks. We all sarve the same Maker, hey? I guess you’re purty reg’lar at our church, though.”
“Thet’s God’s punishment on me for runnin’ away from Halifax, where I hed a church of my own to go to, but he never cared nuthin’ ’bout the ’sential rite, my poor Davie. I ought to ha’ been expelled from membership there and then, thet’s a fact, but the elders were merciful. Sometimes I think ’tis the old French nater that makes me backslide; my grandfather came from Paris in 1783, at the end o’ the Amur’can war, and settled to St. Margaret’s Bay; but then he married into a god-fearin’ German family that emigrated there the same time a’most, and that ought to ha’ made things straight agen.”
Mrs. Strang talked on, glad to find herself floating away from the issue. But the deacon caught her by the hand again and hauled her back.