"And Judah himself!" broke in Miss Taylor. "He is as rough and common as—as—I don't know what. How a man like Cap'n Kendrick can lower himself—debase himself to such a person's level I do not see. You would as soon expect a needle to go through a camel's eye, as the saying is."
There was a slight interval of embarrassment after this outburst. The majority of those present realized that the speaker had gotten her proverb twisted, but, she being Miss Tryphosa Taylor, no one felt like venturing to set her right. Mrs. Captain Godfrey Peasley relieved the situation; she had a habit of relieving situations—when she did not make them tenser. She had gotten into the Shakespeare Reading Society purely by persistence and the possession of adamantine self-confidence. From that shot-proof exterior snubs, hints and reproofs glanced like blown peas from the hull of a battleship. "Heaven knows," confided Mrs. Captain Wingate to Miss Taylor and the Reverend Mrs. Dishup, "why Amelia Peasley ever wanted to join the Society. She doesn't know whether Shakespeare is a man or a disease." Which may or not have been true, the fact remaining that Mrs. Peasley had wanted to join the Society and—joined.
Now, while others hesitated, following Miss Tryphosa's little blunder, she spoke.
"I think," she declared, with conviction, "that Sears Kendrick ought to be ashamed of himself. I think such actions are degradatin'—yes, indeed, right down degradatin'."
After that, further comments upon the captain's conduct would have seemed like anti-climaxes. Therefore the Society proceeded to read "Cymbeline." Mrs. Peasley had something to say about "Cymbeline," also.
Captain Sears himself merely grinned when told of the sensation his conduct was causing.
"All right," he said, "let 'em talk. If they aren't talkin' about me they will be about somebody else."
Judah, to whom this remark was made, snorted.
"Humph!" he growled. "They be talkin' about somebody else. Don't you make no mistake about that, Cap'n Sears."
"That so, Judah? Who's the other lucky man?"