Since that time he had sat under his wife's ministry. In summer the back porch held his chair, in winter the kitchen. By keeping a careful eye upon the bound girl, he sometimes discovered her in a dereliction; it was a happy hour for him when this was the case. It had the effect of distracting his wife's attention from him, for one thing—and when too closely centred upon any one person, Mrs. Deans' regard was apt to prove embarrassing; it also won him much commendation from her—being convinced of the utter depravity of the bound girl, both "individually and collectively," it gratified Mrs. Deans to have her "moral certainty" attested by positive proofs. It made her realize her seer-like qualities.
Mrs. Deans' son, Gamaliel, known to his fond mother as "Maley," and to Jamestown as "Male," stood first in his mother's regard.
Gamaliel was Mrs. Deans' idea of a "fancy" name. She had hesitated long before bestowing it upon her boy, wavering between Gamaliel and Ambrose. She finally decided upon the former, it being more uncommon. The son of Mrs. Deans' sister-in-law's brother was called Ambrose—and, also, Gamaliel was, as Mrs. Deans said, "more suitable," whether to her son's mental or physical endowments she did not specify. Old Mrs. Holder once said she never could "picture out" any one else being called Gamaliel, nor believe that Mrs. Deans' son could have had any other name.
He was a stubborn young lout, whose strong will was only subjective to his mother's because he did not recognize his own strength. She had curbed him as he bitted the huge young Clydesdale colts. Sometimes a well-broken horse realizes its own strength, and we hear a horrid story of torn flesh and trampled limbs when it turns to rend its master. If Gamaliel Deans ever revolted, his mother would suffer.
However, he was quiescent enough, for his mother's schemes were all for his benefit. Besides, he appreciated the charms of a quiet life, and had inherited a liberal share of the diplomacy his paralytic father displayed when he feigned sleep for long hours at a stretch, hoping that he might entrap the bound girl into some piece of unwary carelessness. Both Henry Deans and his son Gamaliel had a deeply rooted belief in the value of the bound girl as a counter-irritant.
Mrs. Deans had had just a "pigeon pair" of children, as Jamestown put it, but her girl had died when an infant. Mrs. Deans was too good a woman not to bear up under the loss, especially as she did not care for girls.
The bound girl made up the regular trio which Mrs. Deans drove before her over roads of her choosing.
It is unnecessary to say much of the bound girl. Mrs. Deans described them often—"Evil incarnate," she called them. Mrs. Deans changed her bound girls now and then. They came to her with all the different merits and various vices of their unhappy class. They left her different incarnations of the same weary, broken, deadened spirit of labor and endurance. Their individual characteristics, capabilities and tendencies had nothing whatever to do with their case. Woman and mother as Mrs. Deans was, she was never moved by their peculiar needs.
It is requisite, doubtless, to the "Great Plan" that there be bound ones among us, enduring—like the hereditary embalmer—the parischite of Egypt—a loathsome heritage—and yet—the pity of it! But Mrs. Deans was not one to question the Providence which ordained for these bound girls their lot in life.
"They're born bad, and bad they are, and bad they'll be—every one of them—evil, root and branch; you can't be up to them and their ways." These were Mrs. Deans' sentiments upon the subject of bound girls, and other opinions do not matter.