“Mean skunk!” said Tom, sympathetically.
“I want to judge as I’d be judged,” replied the deacon; “but I feel ez ef I couldn’t call that man bad enough names. Hesby was ez good a gal ez ever lived, but she went to visit some uv our folks at Burlington, an’ fust thing I know’d she writ me she’d met this chap, and they’d been married, an’ wanted us to forgive her; but he was so good, an’ she loved him so dearly.”
“Good for the gal,” said Tom, and a murmur of approbation ran through the crowd.
“Of course, we forgave her. We’d hev done it ef she married Satan himself,” continued the deacon. “But we begged her to bring her husband up home, an’ let us look at him. Whatever was good enough for her to love was good enough for us, and we meant to try to love Hesby’s husband.”
“Done yer credit, deacon, too,” declared Tom, and again the crowd uttered a confirmatory murmur. “Ef some folks—deacons, too—wuz ez good—But go ahead, deac’n.”
“Next thing we heard from her, he had gone to the place he was raised in; but a friend of his, who went with him, came back, an’ let out he’d got tight, an’ been arrested. She writ him right off, beggin’ him to come home, and go with her up to our place, where he could be out of temptation an’ where she’d love him dearer than ever.”
“Pure gold, by thunder!” ejaculated Tom, while a low “You bet,” was heard all over the room.
Tom’s eyes were in such a condition that he thought the deacon’s were misty, and the deacon noticed the same peculiarities about Tom.
“She never got a word from him,” continued the deacon; “but one of her own came back, addressed in his writing.”
“The infernal scoundrel!” growled Tom, while from the rest of the boys escaped epithets which caused the deacon, indignant as he was, to shiver with horror.