Jane met Brother Gurley and Dr. Miller with equal ease. A hush fell upon the company, and they ate and watched her serve the newcomers and appear to balance such formidable individuals in her hands. Affectation was in that region the deadliest sin a girl could commit against her own popularity, and Jane’s manner was always beautifully simple.
The preacher had a clean-shaven, large face, huge blue eyes, and laughing white teeth, and a sprinkling of fine, indefinitely tinted hair. His figure was vigorous, and well made to bear the hardships of a Methodist circuit-rider. His presence had the grasp of good-fellowship and power, and rather dwarfed Dr. Miller, whom all the girls thought a very pretty man. Dr. Miller wore side-whiskers, and a Lancaster suit of clothes finished by a fine round cloak hooked under his chin. When he took off his hat to bow, two curls fell over his forehead. The woman who would not take Dr. Miller if he wanted her must expect to have the pick of creation, and maybe she would miss it after all. He talked to Jane and ate maple sugar with the greatest of Lancaster ease, telling her he had put up with his cousin in Millersport and borrowed a horse to ride to camp. John Davis at once said the folks at home expected him to put up with them over Sunday, and the other young men resented the doctor’s prompt acceptance of Davis’s hospitality.
The preacher, holding his saucer of sugar in his left hand, was going around and giving the right hand of fellowship to every young person in camp. This was the proper and customary thing for him to do. A preacher who went into company anywhere on the circuit without shaking hands and pushing and strengthening his acquaintance would be a worse stumbling-block than a backslider given up to superfluous clothing and all kinds of sinful levity, or a new convert with artificials in her bonnet. But there was a tingling quality in Brother Gurley’s grasp which stirred the blood; and his heavy voice was as prevailing in its ordinary tones as in the thunders of the pulpit.
“Did you bring your wife with you, Brother Gurley?” simpered Tabitha Gill, a dwarfish, dark old maid, devout in church and esteemed for her ability to make a good prayer.
Mary Thompson whispered behind her back, “Tabitha Gill’s always for findin’ out whether a preacher’s married or not before anybody else does.”
“Not this time,” replied Brother Gurley, warming Sister Gill’s heart with a broad, class-meeting smile. “But I expect to bring her with me when I come around again.”
“Do,” said Tabitha; “and stop at our house.”
“I’m obliged to you, Sister Gill,” replied the preacher. “You have a fine community of young people here.”
“But they ain’t none of ’em converted. There’s a good deal of levity in Georger Chapel neighborhood. Now, Jane, now,—Jane Davis,—she’s a girl nobody can help likin’, but many’s the night that she’s danced away in sinful amusement. I wish you’d do somethin’ for her soul, Brother Gurley.”
“I’ll try,” responded the preacher heartily. He looked with a tender and indulgent eye at Jane, who was dividing her company into two parts, to play one innocent play before the camp broke up.