"Yes, if he wants to."
"Well, I don't. And that's the difference. And we'll see what other people in this village are going to think about it."
Mr. Snell stopped, laid a hand on his wife's arm and wheeled her about. He spoke in a low voice, but his words were metallic in their clearness. "Now look here, Rebecca Snell, you jest go slow on startin' that kind of talk. Dr. Alton's a good man. We are mighty lucky to have him in the old doctor's shoes. Longfields is a mighty small village for a man with such an education as he's got. And if it ever got to his ears that you'd been insultin' his dead wife's memory—well—you'll get jest exactly what you deserve, and I'll help give it to yer. I mean it. Now shut up."
Mrs. Snell glanced at the light blue angry eyes now looking steadily into her own. Between those eyes and her own face, a long and bony finger, quivering with anger, was moving slowly, to and fro. It came very near her face. She blinked, tightened her lips and took a backward step. Then her husband, in a low voice, husky with rage, the vibrating finger almost touching her nose, spoke once more.
"And you stay shut up!"
After a pause, just long enough for his message to be acknowledged by a nod of obedience he started on toward the church.
Mrs. Snell followed after.
In that congregation were persons who came to worship their Creator—the ostensible purpose of the gathering. Miss Susan Pendexter, on the other hand, a somewhat emotional spinster, came to worship the preacher, Rev. George Bentley Heywood. She was thrilled by the originality, the power and the beauty of the sermon which to his own wife seemed, as usual, prosy and commonplace. Many were present because afraid to stay away. Among these were the young men. Children, of course, were present under compulsion, accepting the sermon as a punishment.
No gathering could be more democratic. These descendants of the Pilgrims were not encumbered by class distinctions. Judge Dean, for instance, the most influential citizen of the village, would never presume to patronize either Abner Phillips, the harness maker or Elisha Bisbee, the blacksmith. Uncle Hector, who kept the store, would have snubbed all the reigning monarchs of the earth had he suspected them of willful condescension. The somewhat restless man in a side pew, he whose stiff hair stands straight on end, who snuffs and clears his throat and looks pleasantly around the church, is Lemuel Cobb, the stage driver. He is a descendant of a famous Governor of Plymouth Colony and has a brother who is now President of a Western College. And the two Allen "girls," Nance and Fidelia—now over sixty—have one of the best pews in Church. The fact of their being largely dependent for food and clothing, rent and fuel, on the bounty of their neighbors, lessens in no degree the courtesy they receive.