“Mr. Jones, your socks—your socks——”
“What is that, Mr. Tuck?”
“Your socks. I’m sorry, but did ye intend——”
“Aye, my socks, Deacon,” said Adam, looking apprehensively towards his boots, “aye, I’ve been lookin’ for them—my Sunday socks.”
“They’re on your back,” said the senior deacon, coughing.
Adam Jones flushed all over his pale face; then he smiled, much as if he enjoyed having his Sunday socks on his back rather than on his feet, and then, recollecting, he began to explain to the deacon.
“Well, ’tis Sunday,”—the deacon knew this,—”and Gladys takes very good care of my clothes whatever, and puts them—lays them out in the chest an’—an’ she’s not well to-day.”
While Aphael Tuck was pulling out the strong stitches with which the socks were tacked on,—strong stitches which he and Mrs. Tuck often discussed later as part of the liveliest day Twthill had ever known,—the Recording Angel, who had been taking down Adam’s prayers much cut in angelic shorthand, spaced out every one of these half-true faltering words carefully, and over them, the Angel wrote, in beautiful bright letters, LOVE, and beneath them, with lax impartiality to Calvinism and Wesleyanism, made this note, “Elect: Adam and wife.”