"I thank you," Tom replied. "But you don't seem to be astonished that the preacher wasn't scared."
"Who, Jim? Oh, no. Jim's a Starbuck."
"Don't make me out any worse than I naturally am, Uncle Jasper," said Jim, smiling in that mild consciousness of humor sometimes necessary and always appropriate to the pulpit.
Mrs. Mayfield smiled upon him, and bade him come with her to the place where the short shade of noon-time was napping on the hill-top. He clutched his hat and followed her and old Jasper snorted. "Follers her like a pet lamb," said the old man to his wife when Tom and Lou also had strolled off. "I mean Jim do. But to tell you the truth she'll never marry him; don't know that he wants her, you understand, but if he do he's in a bad fix. She's good and as putty as a red-bird, but I don't reckon that she'd like to be the wife of a mountain preacher. And come to think about it, I don't see why a woman would want to be the wife of any preacher—much. Not that the preacher wouldn't be good to her, but because she'd be a settin' herse'f up as a mark fur all the other women in the neighborhood. Ef a preacher's wife laugh they say she ain't a takin' no intrust in church work, an' ef she is sorrowful they say it's all put on."
"Jasper, you don't know what you're a talkin' about, but you air puffeckly nat'ral as long as you're a sayin' suthin' ag'in women. You don't understand 'em at all."
"And ef I did I'd be smarter than old Solomon. He had fo' or five hundred of 'em about him and he didn't understand even the most foolish one of 'em. How air you goin' to understand a critter that don't understand herse'f? But I tell you this here Miz Mayfield is smart—talks like a new book that's got picturs in it."
"Oh! Then I reckon I can't talk at all."
"Have you hearn anybody hint that you can't talk? Did you ever notice that when a man begins to talk about a woman, makes no diffunce who, his wife puts it up that he's a talkin' about her? Did you?"
"No, nor you nuther. Gracious above!—book with picturs in it! But if Jim wants to marry her, why don't he say so? What do he want allus to be a steppin' round her skirts like a frost-bit chicken?"
"Wall, he ain't had time to ax her yit. It took the gospel mo' than a thousand years to reach America, an' we oughtn't to expect preachers to be in a rush."