NELI. Ye have no need to tell me that! [Looking for a place in which to hide the book until she returns.] Have I not a deep an' proper admiration for theology? Have I not had one minister an' five deacons an' a revivalist in my family, to say nothin' at all of one composer of hymns?
HUGH. Yiss, yiss. Aye, 'tis a celebrated family. I am no sayin' anythin' against your family.
NELI. Then what?
HUGH. [Pleadingly.] Deacon Roberts has great fire with which to save souls. We're needin' that book on Babylon's wickedness. Give it back to me, Neli!
NELI. Oh, aye! [Looks at husband.] I'm not sayin' but that ye are wicked, Hugh, an' needin' these essays, for ye have no ministers and deacons and hymn composers among your kin.
HUGH. [Triumphantly.] Aye, aye, that's it! That's it! An' the more need have I to read till my nostrils are full of the smoke of—of Babylon.
NELI. [Absent-mindedly tucking book away on shelf as she talks.] Aye, but there has been some smoke about Deacon Roberts's reputation which has come from some fire less far away than Babylon.
HUGH. What smoke?
NELI. [Evasively.] Well, I am thinkin' about my eggs which vanished one week ago to-day. There was no one in that mornin' but Deacon Roberts. Mrs. Jones the Wash had come for her soap an' gone before I filled that basket with eggs.
HUGH. [Watching her covertly, standing on tiptoe and craning his neck as she stows away book.] Yiss, yiss!