The young man glanced with unconscious complacency at his brawny wrists and arms and I began to really like him. It made my heart beat quickly to think of Loveday in such a crowd as that; and yet I could not quite realize that Loveday could fail anywhere, to be mistress of the situation!
“While the jeering and hooting went on,” the young man continued, “the crowd shouted out ridiculous questions as well. What horse was she trying to make a book on? She’d better get the hayseed out of her hair before she went to preaching! Did she ever see anything but a plough-horse in Greenappleville, where she came from!
“‘There ain’t no finer horses anywheres than there is raised in our county!’ she cried indignantly.” He actually imitated Loveday’s voice, as well as her peculiar dialect. Oh, there was no doubt that it was Loveday whom he meant! “‘And our horses are put to noble and fittin’ uses,’ she went on, ‘helpin’ folks to till the sile and get their daily bread and serve their Maker. There ain’t none o’ them put to the evil one’s service, like these poor creturs—leastways I hope there ain’t.’ She uttered the last clause a little doubtfully and the crowd laughed.
“Some jeering fellow asked her if she had come to put up her money on Alf Reeder’s racer. She answered that she hadn’t ‘done no such a thing. She had come in the fear of the Lord to find out something that would lift a burden from a back where it didn’t belong—or where at least she thought it didn’t belong.’” Octavia and I looked at each other. “She had come in the fear of the Lord and she had been so eager to find out something that she hadn’t thought much about the wickedness, but it had been borne in upon her so that the Lord wouldn’t let her go away without raising her voice against it.
“‘When your gain is your fellow-cretur’s loss how are you better than any kind of a thief?’ she asked. And then she began to say things—well, pretty hard things about those who thought it was all right to come if they didn’t bet. I only wish I could repeat them just as she said them! I wasn’t any the less struck by them because the coat fitted! But I can’t make you understand the magnetism—or whatever one may call it—about her personality.”
“I’m very glad she made such an impression upon you, Ned,” said his sister quietly. The young man sat down, looking a little shamefaced, and the girls began assiduously to pour his tea.
“She did make an impression on me,” he said. “I wouldn’t have you think I was just mimicking her,” he continued as he stirred his tea. “I only wanted to give you an idea of her quaint dialect—it seemed to add to the effect of simplicity and straightforwardness that she produced. I’m sure you never heard anything like it in your lives!”
Hadn’t we? Octavia and I looked at each other again.
“It sounds like our Loveday’s dialect,” said Estelle, who still looked like a lily down-beaten by the rain and had shown but a languid interest in the conversation, partly I thought because she shrank from the subject of horse-races.
“It seems a little like Loveday altogether,” she added reflectively. “I think if she hadn’t lived such a retired life she might be capable of doing some such thing as that. Of course, now, she would be simply terrified in such a crowd. She’d be like a pelican of the wilderness and an owl of the desert if anything were to drive her into the world. I can’t think of anything that would drive her here to the city; she hates to go even as far as the Port.”