Chapter 4 - part 1
SARAH BROWN was ready with an extra-appetizing supper that
evening, as a reward for the victory she was sure Sam must have achieved
when he and the minister combined forces in a brush with that heretic
Richards. But when he appeared, her hopes were dashed. He was glum and
grumpy.
"How did it
come out! How do you feel?" she hastened to ask.
"I feel as if
I’d been in the preacher’s car with him and he was going sixty, and
someone hit us head on, crumpled the bumper and the front fenders, bent
back the radiator, drove the hood through the windshield, sprinkled us
with glass, and jammed the motor through the rear end. I’m
wrecked!" and Sam slumped dejectedly down in his chair.
Aghast, Sarah
gradually got it all out of him. Then indignation took the place of
surprise. To think that her respected husband, Deacon Brown, and above all
the minister of their church, should back down before a mere stripling who
was carried off by this new wind of doctrine! Preposterous! After all,
these men! It takes a woman with intelligence and backbone to straighten
such people out. As her husband read the paper and tried to forget and
give his mind a rest, she thought it all out and planned her campaign.
"Sam,"
she said, as they went to bed, "I’ve decided on something. I’m
going over to see that woman Richards tomorrow when I get my work done. I’ll
think up some excuse. I’ll settle her on this question, and we will be
able to convince her stubborn husband through her. It takes the women to
fix such things up. How’s that for a plan!" But the tired and
crestfallen Sam was already breathing heavily. With a scornful
"Humph!" Sarah gazed into the blackness, and thought and thought
and thought.
There was a
different expression on her face when she sat across the supper table from
her husband the next evening, and Sam noticed it.
"Well, how did
the visit with the heretic come out!" he asked.
"Don’t call
her that," urged Sarah with a pained look.
"Well, wouldn’t
that sideswipe you!" gasped her husband, stopping in the midst of the
mastication of a mouthful to scrutinize his heretofore sane wife.
"What’s coming over us?"
"Would you
think it, Sam, she went on, ignoring his surprise and question, "she’s
the sweetest little woman, and we’re friends already. They’re poor,
but the house and her clothes, and even the children’s, are clean and
neat. And those kiddies are the dearest and best-behaved little things. I
wish,— " and childless Sarah looked far off out the window, while a
tear glistened in her eye. Sam sat speechless in the almost sacred
presence of her master emotion.
"With all
their poverty and hardship," resumed Sarah, recovering and touching
her eyes with her handkerchief, "they are happy, Sam, happier than we
are, with all we have. I wish you could see that home.
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