“It's pretty strong.”
“Do you think it will prevail?”
“Well, most o' folks don't know what they want; and if there's some folks that know what they don't want, they can generally keep from havin' it.”
Bolton made a soft husky prefatory noise of protest in his throat, which seemed to stimulate his wife to a more definite assertion, and she cut in before he could speak—
“I should say that unless them that stood Mr. Peck's friends first off, and got him here, done something to keep him, his enemies wa'n't goin' to take up his cause.”
Annie divined a personal reproach for Bolton in the apparent abstraction.
“Oh, now, you'll see it'll all come out right in the end, Pauliny,” he mildly opposed. “There ain't any such great feelin' about Mr. Peck; nothin' but what'll work itself off perfec'ly natural, give it time. It's goin' to come out all right.”
“Yes, at the day o' jedgment,” Mrs. Bolton assented, plunging her fists into the dough, and beginning to work a contempt for her husband's optimism into it.
“Yes, an' a good deal before,” he returned. “There's always somethin' to objec' to every minister; we ain't any of us perfect, and Mr. Peck's got his failin's; he hain't built up the church quite so much as some on 'em expected but what he would; and there's some that don't like his prayers; and some of 'em thinks he ain't doctrinal enough. But I guess, take it all round, he suits pretty well. It'll come out all right, Pauliny. You'll see.”
A pause ensued, of which Annie felt the awfulness. It seemed to her that Mrs. Bolton's impatience with this intolerable hopefulness must burst violently. She hastened to interpose. “I think the trouble is that people don't fully understand Mr. Peck at first. But they do finally.”