Estelle looked up suddenly from my face to Octavia’s and something that she read there was answered by a questioning gleam in her eyes.
“It seems so much like Loveday,” she murmured.
“I hope you understand that I wouldn’t ridicule her, for the world,” repeated Ned Carruthers. “I respected her, I reverenced her. And she had more effect on me than all your eloquence has ever had, Peggy. She made me really determine never to go to a horse-race again. You see, Peggy, I’m a little used to your preaching, but hers was of a new kind. When she said it was ‘a livin’ shame to take the noblest dumb creturs the Lord ever made and make ’em minister to one of the most dishonorable of human vices,’ why, it really struck me that the point was well taken! ‘An’ you say that you ain’t betting but only lookin’ on, what be you a-doin’ but encouragin’ the wickedness in a mean-spirited way?’ she said. Then she quoted Scripture; ‘he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad’—You ought to have heard her voice ring out on that! She had one of those high-keyed, vibrating voices that have such a carrying power. I really think”—the young man stirred his tea with reflective deliberation, “that I shall never go to a horse-race again.”
“Then Heaven bless the preacher-woman!” his sister exclaimed with an undertone of real earnestness. “I only wish you had met her before you went to college,” she added.
There was evidently a hidden meaning in the wish, for it made the young man color to the roots of his blonde hair.
“You do not know what hard work Peggy makes of being a sister,” he said, glancing up from his tea, half laughing, and yet, as it was easy to see, really shamefaced and embarrassed. “I’ve been an awful lot of trouble to her.”
“We have had some experience in being sisters ourselves,” said Octavia drily.
“Our boys are perfectly lovely!” Estelle remarked decidedly, and scowling at her tea-cake, since it was not quite the thing to openly scowl at Octavia. Estelle had become quite too uncomfortably sensitive since Dave’s misdoing.
“They are all perfectly lovely—from the proper point of view. That’s what I tell Peggy,” said Ned Carruthers, like a graceless young scamp. “But, seriously, I suppose I was some trouble to Peggy up there at the country college, after we first had the money left us, you know. I went to horse-races up there. The preacher-woman is quite right; I wish I had met her before as you say, Peggy, and then I might not have gone. Perhaps, however, I was in a more receptive frame of mind from having gotten into trouble by means of horse-races. There was not so rough a crowd either up there in the country, as I saw to-day. There were a good many innocent and guileless farm boys who were the ready prey of the sharpers.”
“Were the college students allowed to go?” interrupted Estelle.