PARSON LOLLY SeNds REGaRDs LooK OUT FOR PARSON LOLLY
A storm sprang in my mind, such a whirlwind of spirit as I believe I have never before experienced, when behind the quick, expectant face of this American girl, one so tender to her stricken friend, one so fearless, I saw that obscene sign. She was at first dazzled by the light in my hand, and her dark blue eyes show wonderfully bright and wild. Her gold hair then had a fine-spun beauty. And beside the old gate-tower lay the sneering message of one who affronted both manhood and womanhood. Anger at the marauder who made beauty his victim, shame for being duped, fear of being duped again, a craving to bring the rascal down—these and I know that not what other unleashed gales met in the cross-roads of my mind. The winds rose to raving, towered into hurricanes. My soul was dizzy, staggering. I was not rational at that moment—then the gales went down. I bit my lip hard, stepped around the two women there, picked up the sign (which had been printed with a smudgy pencil on a stiff folio sheet) and showed it to the rest.
“Parson Lolly!” exclaimed more than one.
Then Oxford, perhaps intending to be jocose, said,
“ ‘Beware of Parson Lolly.’ Beggar’s a bit late, it seems to me.”
“At least,” said Crofts Pendleton thickly “it proves he’s human—the devil!”
“In some ways human, perhaps,” amended Maryvale.
“What else, then?”
“Less than human. Consider the birds of the air, my friends. They are, I suppose, less than human—yet—they—can—fly!”
I gave a stout shrug to rid myself of the disquiet compelled by such a suggestion.