“We've been round in the enemy's camp, everywhere; and I've committed Gerrish himself to an armed neutrality. That wasn't difficult. The difficulty was in another quarter—with Mr. Peck himself. He's more opposed than any one else to his stay in Hatboro'. You know he intended going away this morning?”
“Did he?” Annie asked dishonestly. The question obliged her to say something.
“Yes. He came to Putney before breakfast to thank him and take leave of him, and to tell him of the plan he had for—Imagine what!”
“I don't know,” said Annie, hoarsely, after an effort, as if the untruth would not come easily. “I am worse than Mrs. Munger,” she thought.
“For going to Fall River to teach school among the mill-hands' children! And to open a night-school for the hands themselves.”
The doctor waited for her sensation, and in its absence he looked so disappointed that she was forced to say, “To teach school?”
Then he went on briskly again. “Yes. Putney laboured with him on his knees, so to speak, and got him to postpone his going till to-morrow morning; and then he came to me for help. We enlisted Mrs. Wilmington in the cause, and we've spent the day working up the Peck sentiment to a fever-heat. It's been a very queer campaign; three Gentiles toiling for a saint against the elect, and bringing them all over at last. We've got a paper, signed by a large majority of the members of the church—the church, not the society—asking Mr. Peck to remain; and Putney's gone to him with the paper, and he's coming round here to report Mr. Peck's decision. We all agreed that it wouldn't do to say anything about his plan for the future, and I fancy some of his people signed our petition under the impression that they were keeping a valuable man out of another pulpit.”
Annie accompanied the doctor's words, which she took in to the last syllable, with a symphony of conjecture as to how the change in Mr. Peck's plans, if they prevailed with him, would affect her, and the doctor had not ceased to speak before she perceived that it would be deliverance perfect and complete, however inglorious. But the tacit drama so vividly preoccupied her with its minor questions of how to descend to this escape with dignity that still she did not speak, and he took up the word again.
“I confess I've had my misgivings about Mr. Peck, and about his final usefulness in a community like this. In spite of all that Putney can say of his hard-headedness, I'm afraid that he's a good deal of a dreamer. But I gave way to Putney, and I hope you'll appreciate what I've done for your favourite.”
“You are very good,” she said, in mechanical acknowledgment: her mind was set so strenuously to break from her dishonest reticence that she did not know really what she was saying. “Why—why do you call him a dreamer?” She cast about in that direction at random.