Each talked in his own strain about his own hobby, without regard to what his companion was saying. While one was speaking the other waited, absent-eyed, for the first pause for breath, when he promptly took up his parable where he had left off when forced to pause for breath himself. The one never heard what the other said, each being too much occupied in thinking what he should say next to bother about listening to any one else. They derived much of the same mutual benefit and amusement from these conversations as two dogs do when they race madly up and down opposite sides of a fence, barking at each other. Many learned arguments, held in high places, are conducted upon these same lines.
The sunny afternoon wore along. Mrs. Deans had yawned several times, yawned audibly and significantly; but her husband, in full cry after the errors of the Catholics and the bigotry of the Church of England, disregarded the danger signal, and went on his conversational way rejoicing. Mr. Carroll, winding his way through the intricacies of the bribery and corruption and scandals of the last election, was oblivious of her yawns, their meaning, and even—ungallant as it may seem—of her presence.
Gamaliel, coming in from his plough to refill his water-jug, looked slyly through the door at the trio.
"She's putting her ears back," said he to himself, with pleasurable anticipation of a row, as he looked at his mother. He waited a few moments in expectation of a crisis, but at the instant when his hopes were highest an interruption occurred in the arrival of Mrs. Wilson.
Mr. Carroll loathed Mrs. Wilson, a well-fed-looking but lugubrious woman, chronically aggrieved. From her own account, she had inherited and endured "all the ills the flesh is heir to," but nevertheless she was plump and comfortable-looking. Her dark eyes were bright, her red cheeks rosy, her nose a pug; her lips showed red against the whiteness of her false teeth—when the teeth were in her lips pouted, when the teeth were out her lips pursed.
Mrs. Wilson was somewhat perilously given over to vanities, and had fringe on her black merino dress and a white muslin rose in her black bonnet. She had her knitting with her, an index of her intention to stay for tea, and an encouragement to Mrs. Deans to insist that she should remain. Mrs. Wilson protested she had had no intention of staying, and Mrs. Deans insisted that she should stay. Mrs. Wilson's protestations continued all the while she was laying off her bonnet, and Mrs. Deans' persuasive eloquence flowed freely; finally, with a fine assumption of compulsion, Mrs. Wilson ceased protesting, and allowed herself, knitting in hand, to be led back to the dining-room.
By the time the two ladies emerged, Mr. Carroll was hobbling out of the gate and Mr. Deans was enjoying a long-deferred chew. The two women sat down opposite each other in rocking-chairs. Mrs. Wilson produced a black apron, which she donned, and then felt in her pocket for the goose-quill she carried to hold the end of her knitting needle, stuck it in her belt, and proceeded to turn the heel of a carpet-warp sock; at the same time to give Mrs. Deans a full and particular account of her sufferings from erysipelas. Mrs. Deans herself had had some experience with that disease, having once seen a woman in St. Ann's who was bald from its effects.
Mrs. Wilson's needles clicked; Mrs. Deans' waxed thread hummed as she vigorously sewed carpet-rags; a distant thud-thud told that Myron Holder was churning.
The sun began to sink. Suddenly Mrs. Wilson dropped her hands and her knitting into her lap, and asked, with an explosive abruptness only excusable as an indication of the startling character of the question:
"Say, Jane—I want to ask you something! Has Myron Holder named her young one?"