“You're a schoolmarm again, Cynthy.”
“Do you mean to say?”
“Miss Lucretia Penniman done it.”
“Miss Lucretia Penniman!” Cynthia began to think his rheumatism was driving him out of his mind.
“You bet. 'Long toward the openin' of the engagement there wahn't scarcely anybody thar but me, and they was a-goin'. But they come fast enough when they l'arned she was in town, and she blew 'em up higher'n the Petersburg crater. Great Tecumseh, there's a woman! Next to General Grant, I'd sooner shake her hand than anybody's livin'.”
“Do you mean to say that Miss Lucretia is in Brampton and spoke at the mass meeting?”
“Spoke!” exclaimed Ephraim, “callate she did—some. Tore 'em all up. They'd a hung Isaac D. Worthington or Levi Dodd if they'd a had 'em thar.”
Cynthia, striving to be calm herself, got him into a chair and took his stick and straightened out his leg, and then Ephraim told her the story, and it lost no dramatic effect in his telling. He would have talked all night. But at length the sound of wheels was heard in the street, Cynthia flew to the door, and a familiar voice came out of the darkness.
“You need not wait, Gamaliel. No, thank you, I think I will stay at the hotel.”
Gamaliel was still protesting when Miss Lucretia came in and seized Cynthia in her arms, and the door was closed behind her.