“She gathered a crowd around her. I don’t suppose many of those fellows had ever been inside a church, and they evidently meant, at first, to have some fun out of her; but the laughter and jeering died out. She was in such deadly earnest! That sort of thing is pretty sure to win respect when there is no self-interest about it. There was no cant about her, either; and she seemed to have so much plain common sense that one could hardly call her a crank.
“Some of those who had hooted at first looked really ashamed of themselves before she got through. As for me, I thought of Savonarola and those fellows. I caught myself wishing I could get a chance to explain to her that I hadn’t come to bet, but only to see the horses. I laughed at myself a little for having that feeling, but before she got through I began to think she was right, and it was a disgraceful thing to be there, anyway! She talked about touching pitch and being defiled, and causing one’s brother to offend, and all that; things that I’ve heard all my life, of course, but she had such a forcible, original way of putting them. Her quaint dialect added to the effect of her originality. But, after all, I think it was the heart of the woman, showing in every word she said, that made her exhortation so impressive. She reminded me of the preacher in one of Jean Ingelow’s poem’s, ‘so anxious not to go to heaven alone.’”
Octavia leaned toward me and whispered, breathlessly:
“Loveday? Could it have been Loveday?”
CHAPTER IX
A STUDIO TEA
I knew in a moment that it was Loveday who had preached at the race-course. I could guess at a reason for her going there, of which Octavia and Estelle knew nothing, for she had not shown them Hiram Nute’s photograph of a horse which had caused the exciting idea to “ketch a holt” of her in the middle of the night.
I was still in the dark as to what the idea might be, but it seemed probable that it was connected with Dave’s trouble. If Dave had been so wicked as to bet, I could not see that it made any difference which horse he had bet upon, but I trusted Loveday sufficiently to be sure that there was some reason for her mysterious actions.
I could see her gaunt figure there among the coarse, rough men, the color bright upon her high cheek-bones—perhaps wavering a little; but I knew there was no wavering of her courage in the “giving of her testimony.” In our church the women kept silent, for Parson Grover strongly shared St. Paul’s opinion on that subject, but Loveday went to the Methodist Church and always “spoke in meeting.”
In his eagerness to tell us about the woman preacher the young man had set down the dainty porcelain teacup he had been holding and stood, leaning upon the back of his sister’s chair; his boyish, somewhat heavy face lighted up and seemed to grow finer, so that the resemblance to his sister was more striking.
“I kept very near to the woman while she was preaching,” he continued, “partly to hear what she said, partly because it was such a rough crowd that I was afraid they might be really rude to her—get to pushing and jostling her, you know.”