"Are ye sartin ob dat, massa? Bress me, I breeve you're right, for oncet! It ar Mass' Penn's voice, shore enough!"
He opened the door, but started back again with another shriek, convinced for an instant that it was, after all, the devil, who had artfully borrowed Penn's voice to deceive him.
But no! It was Penn himself, his hat and clothes in his hand, smeared with black tar and covered with feathers from head to foot; not even his features spared, nor yet his hair; on his cheeks great clumps of gray goose plumes, suggestive of diabolical ears, and with no other covering but this to shield him from the night wind, save the emptied bed-tick, which he had drawn over his shoulders, and which Toby had mistaken for Satanic wings.
VI.
A STRANGE COAT FOR A QUAKER.
Now, Virginia Villars was the very last person by whom Penn would have wished to be seen. He was well aware how utterly grotesque and ludicrous he must appear. But he was not in a condition to be very fastidious on this point. Stunned by blows, stripped of his clothing (which could not be put on again, for reasons), cruelly suffering from the violence done him, exposed to the cold, excluded from Mrs. Sprowl's virtuous abode, he had no choice but to seek the protection of those whom he believed to be his truest friends.
In the little sitting-room of the blind old minister he had always been gladly welcomed. Such minds as his were rare in Curryville. His purity of thought, his Christian charity, his ardent love of justice, and (quite as much as any thing) his delight in the free and friendly discussion of principles, whether moral, political, or theological, made him a great favorite with the lonely old man. His coming made the winter evenings bloom. Then the aged clergyman, deprived of sight, bereft of the companionship of books, and of the varied consolations of an active life, felt his heart warmed and his brain enlivened by the wine of conversation. He and Penn, to be sure, did not always agree. Especially on the subject of non-resistance they had many warm and well-contested arguments; the young Quaker manifesting, by his zeal in the controversy, that he had an abundance of "fight" in him without knowing it.
Nor to Mr. Villars alone did Penn's visits bring pleasure. They delighted equally young Carl and old Toby. And Virginia? Why, being altogether devoted to her blind parent, for whose happiness she could never do enough, she was, of course, enchanted with the attentions she saw Penn pay him. That was all; at least, the dear girl thought that was all.
As for Salina, forsaken spouse of the gay Lysander Sprowl, she too, after sulkily brooding over her misfortunes all day, was glad enough to have any intelligent person come in and break the monotony of her sad life in the evening.