“Oh! Oh, yes,” Mr. Mandeville assented.
He did not seem greatly interested.
“She’s always been just crazy about ’em,”
Mrs. Braile explained. “Beginnin’
with Nancy Billin’s’s little girl.
Well!”
“Yes,” the Squire amplified. “It
was the best thing, or at least the strongest thing
in Jane. I don’t say anything against it,
mother,” he said tenderly to his wife.
“Jane was a good girl, especially after she got
over her faith in Dylks, and she’s a good woman.
At least, Jim thinks so.”
Mrs. Braile contented herself as she could with his
ironical concession.
The stranger looked at his watch; he jumped to his
feet. “Nine o’clock! Mrs. Braile,
I’m ashamed. But you must blame your husband,
partly. Good night, ma’am; good—Why,
look here, Squire Braile!” he arrested himself
in offering his hand. “How about the obscurity
of the scene where Joe Smith founded his superstition,
which bids fair to live right along with the other
false religions? Was Leatherwood, Ohio, a narrower
stage than Manchester, New York? And in point
of time the two cults were only four years apart.”
“Well, that’s a thing that’s occurred
to me since we’ve been talking. Suppose
we look into it to-morrow? Come round to breakfast—about
six o’clock. One point, though: Joe
Smith only claimed to be a prophet, and Dylks claimed
to be a god. That made it harder, maybe for his
superstition.”
