“Well, are you going to have some breakfast?”
his wife asked. “I’ll get you some
fresh coffee.”
“Well, I would like a little—with
the head on—Martha, that’s a fact.
Have I got time for another pipe?”
“No, I don’t reckon you have,” his
wife said, and she passed into the kitchen again,
where she continued to make such short replies as Braile’s
discourse required of her.
He knocked his pipe out on the edge of his still uptilted
chair, as he talked. “One fool like Abel
I can stand, and I was just going to come in when
Sally came in sight; and then I knew that two fools
like Abel would make me sick. So I waited till
the Creator of heaven and earth could get a minute
off and help me out. But He seemed pretty busy
with the solar system this morning, and I had about
given up when He sent that Gillespie girl in sight.
I knew that would fetch Sally; but it was an inspiration
of my own to suggest Abel’s chance to him; I
don’t want to put that on your Maker, Martha.”
“It was your inspiration to get him to stay
in the first place,” Mrs. Braile said within.
“No, Martha; that was my unfailing obedience
to the sacred laws of hospitality; I didn’t
expect to fall under their condemnation a second time,
though.” Mrs. Braile did not answer, and
by the familiar scent from within, Braile knew that
his coffee must be nearly ready. As he dropped
his chair forward, he heard a sound of frying, and
“Pshaw, Martha!” he called. “You’re
not getting me some fresh bacon?”
“Did you suppose there’d be some left?”
she demanded, while she stepped to and fro at her
labors. Her steps ceased and she called, “Well,
come in now, Matthew, if you don’t want everything
to get cold, like the pone is.”
Braile obeyed, saying, “Oh, I can stand cold
pone,” and at sight of the table with
the coffee and bacon renewed upon it, he mocked tenderly,
“Now just to reward you, Martha, I’ve got
half a mind to go with you to the next meeting in
the Temple.”
“I don’t know as I’m goin’
myself,” she said, pouring the coffee.
“I wish you would, just to please me,”
he teased.
No one could say quite how it happened that the stranger
went home from the camp-meeting with old David Gillespie
and his girl. Many had come forward with hospitable
offers, and the stranger had been affable with all;
but he had slipped through the hands he shook and had
parried the invitations made him. Gillespie had
not seemed to invite him, and his shy daughter had
shrunk aside when the chief citizens urged their claims;
yet the stranger went with them to their outlying
farm, and spent all the next day there alone in the
tall woods that shut its corn fields in.
