“You must be careful how you say anything about the Shakers before Ansel,” his wife explained. “I believe he would be willing to go back to them now, if he knew what to do with the children and me.”
“If it were not for their unpractical doctrine of celibacy,” said Hughes, “the Shakers, as a religious sect, could perform a most useful office in the transition from the status to better conditions. They are unselfish, and most communities are not.”
“We might all go back with Ansel,” said Mrs. Denton, “and they could distribute us round in the different Families. I wonder if Ansel’s bull is hanging up in the South Family barn yet? You know,” she said, “he painted a red bull on a piece of shingle when they were painting the barn one day, and nailed it up in a stall; when the elders found it they labored with him, and then Ansel left the community, and went out into the world. But they say, once a Shaker always a Shaker, and I believe he’s had a bad conscience ever since he’s left them.”
Not long after this Ray came in one night dressed for a little dance that he was going to later, and Mrs. Denton had some moments alone with him before Peace joined them. She made him tell where he was going, and who the people were that were giving the dance, and what it would all be like—the rooms and decorations, the dresses, the supper.
“And don’t you feel very strange and lost, in such places?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” said Ray. “I can’t always remember that I’m a poor Bohemian with two cents in my pocket. Sometimes I imagine myself really rich and fashionable. But to-night I shan’t, thank you, Mrs. Denton.”
She laughed at the look he gave her in acknowledgment of her little scratch. “Then you wouldn’t refuse to come to a little dance here, if we were rich enough to give one?” she asked.
“I would come instantly.”
“And get your fashionable friends to come?”
“That might take more time. When are you going to give your little dance?”