“Why, you remember,” Uncle Cephas ran on in the familiar voice with which he talked about his cattle and his crops, “that he told the people the nations should be snares and traps, and scourges in your sides and thorns in your eyes until they perished from off the good land, and the reason was, or would be, that they made marriages with them.”
“Yes, certainly,” interjected Roger impatiently.
“But that isn’t all; don’t say ‘certainly’ in such a matter of fact way; it was something else; it was making marriages ‘with the remnant,’ those that remain among you, not the round-about nations, but the among-you nations, and there’s where the danger is, I tell the young folks; young folks never know their dangers; it is the believers that don’t believe the folks that come to church and don’t confess Christ, that is the hindrance, and the ones that bring punishment of scourges and snares and traps and thorns; it is like the half of a truth that is the worst of a lie. David Prince comes regularly and listens to the truth, and if I do say it to your face, you put it powerful; and he goes away and by his actions confesses that he doesn’t believe a word you say. I labored with Jean Draper, but she only cried, like the dear girl she is, and said she couldn’t give him up; not if the whole session said so.”
“She came to me,” answered Roger, in his quietest tones, “and I told her to hold on to him and I would marry them if the session tore me to pieces.”
“I believe you would,” laughed Uncle Cephas. “Well, I’ve washed my hands. I didn’t expect to hinder anything. I suppose I can trust my minister if he hasn’t come to his gray hairs. I thought that hay was the first fruits and I’d bring it. You see Bensalem is as dear to me as the land of Israel to old Joshua and Samuel. The Lord’s eyes are always upon it, and it flows with milk and other good things. No offence, I hope,” he added in his sweet, old, slow voice.
Roger hurried into the house, and hustled Judith and her chops to the dinner table.
“I believe I’ll take you this afternoon, Judith; it’s time you began your vacation; all the other boarding-schools closed long ago. You will see the desolation of the Meadow Centre parsonage and offer your services on the spot. King can’t get a housekeeper to suit him since Mrs. Foster left. You will suit him exactly; perhaps he likes burnt chops.”
After the little bustle subsided, Marion asked: “Roger, why didn’t you tell him about Ruth of Moab—Judith and I are just reading Ruth, who married one of the chosen people, and, if Samuel wrote the story, he made the sweetest love-story that ever was written—and she was one in the direct line of the ancestry of Christ.”
“Because that would have been in confirmation of his point,” said Roger, breaking an egg carefully.
“I don’t see how,” replied Marion.