CHAPTER IX
DYNAMITE
When a man injures a woman's feelings by any particular course of conduct to which she objects, the maternal in her rises to the surface and she treats and forgives him as she would a naughty child,—but a man makes any kind of woman-affront into a lover's quarrel. That is what masculine Glendale has been doing to its women folks for four days, and I believe everybody has been secretly enjoying it.
As to the rally, they have stood aside with their hands in their pockets and their noses in the air, and if it hadn't been for Aunt Augusta and Nell and Jane being natural-born carpenters and draymen, we might have had to give it up and let them go on with it to their own glory.
When Nell and Jane went to see Mr. Dodd about building the long tables to serve the barbecue dinner on, he said he was too busy to do it and hadn't even any lumber to sell.
Then things happened in my back yard that it sounds like a romance to write about. Jane sent me over to borrow the Crag's team and wagon and Henrietta and Cousin Martha and any of the rest of his woman-impedimenta that I could get. He was out of town, trying a case over at Bolivar, and wouldn't get back until Monday night.
I am glad he wasn't here, for it would have gone hard with me to treat him in the manner that Jane decided it was best for all the women in Glendale to treat all the men in this crisis. It sounded sweet and cold as molasses dispenses itself to you in midwinter, and I could see it was a strain on Mamie and Caroline and Mrs. Kirkland, Nell's mother, and young Mrs. Dodd, the carpenter's wife,—the Boston girl that married him before she realized him,—to keep it up from day to day.
Besides that I'm going to be a politician's wife—though he doesn't know it yet—and I want the Crag to be away from the necessity of taking any sides in this civilized warfare. That's one reason I am such a go-between for Uncle Peter and the League, I am making votes for my man, so I consider it all right for me never to deliver any of their messages to each other as they are given to me, but to twist them into agreeability to suit myself.
Sallie said the Dominie was entirely on our side and that was why she went walking with him Sunday afternoon. All the other men were cool to him and he is so sensitive.