It had grown a little grayer of twilight; the two visitors, trapped as it were within the high board enclosures, fenced all about with sweeps of tangled vine, the pale glimmering of ghostly blossoms, felt uncomfortable. With slow suspicion they moved away from one so frankly the author of gin and pitfall; from one who could so calmly admit that bits of fly-paper dribbling about her garden paths were “calculated.” “Who was it,” whispered Mrs. Tyarck, darkly—“who was it once said that Frenzy was sort of odd?” The two visitors moved instinctively toward a way of exit. With one more sigh Miss Frenzy reluctantly followed them. As they cast about in their minds for means of final reproof, she paused at the kitchen door. There, where a rain-barrel stood under a leader, was a bit of soap in a flower-pot saucer; seizing it, the old shopkeeper began vigorously washing her hands.
“Five waters,” sighed Miss Frenzy—“five waters, before I can feel that my hands are in any degree cleansed!”
The others stood watching her. Instantly they seized the opportunity.
“Well, I should think so.” Mrs. Capron hawked her superior virtue. “I’m glad to hear you say that, Frenzy. Nice work indeed you’ve been doin’ with them hands! Murderin’ and slayin’! Why can’t you live and let live (unless, of course, it’s rats or mosquitoes)? Now you go and get the blood of them innercent worms on your shoulders! Why couldn’t you let ’em go on feedin’ where their Creator wanted ’em to feed?”
They looked at her.
“All them different cruelties,” they commented—“fly-paper to track them ignorant ants onto, and that there trap for cats.... Well, you got more spots onto your soul than soap can take off. ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ it says. Why”—this burst of feeling from Mrs. Tyarck—“why, it’s all I can do to set foot on a spider!”
“And look at me with wasps!” exclaimed Mrs. Capron. “How many wasps I’ve let go for their enjoyment of life, even though, for all I know, next thing they might sting me or one of mine.”
Mrs. Capron, getting warm and virtuous, sat down in the kitchen doorway. Opening the netted catchall, she took out therefrom a bundle of tracts. This lady was the important local officer of many humanitarian societies and lost no opportunity to improve the morale of her community. The tract she selected for Miss Frenzy was of an impressive blue with the title, “Deal Tenderly with the Humble Animals that Cannot Speak.”
“Now think of them ants,” exhorted Mrs. Capron. She looked hard at Miss Frenzy Giddings. “Think of them thoughtless ants runnin’ onto that fly-paper and not able to call out to the others what’s happened to ’em!”
“You’re like me,” said Mrs. Tyarck. Taking her handkerchief, she wet it in the rain-barrel and obsequiously attempted to rub off a slight fly-paper stickiness still on the mohair of her friend. “You’re like me. I’m that tender-hearted I can’t even boil a lobster. I was so from a child. Come time the kettle boils it’s Tyarck always has to put the lobster in—me all of a tremble!”