She began again, then stopped; how to impart the full flavour of that which had befallen her she did not know.  It seemed to her that the difficulty lay in Ephraim’s silence.  She was not aware that she had not even a distinct thought for a certain interest in her late companion which she most wanted to put into words.  “Ephraim, it’s all very well for you to stand there drying your feet, but—­but—­they were just like other people, as you told Mr. Finney, you know.”

“Did you expect them to have horns and tails?”

“I don’t think they are very wicked,” said Susannah.  She looked down as she said it, speaking with a certain undefined tenderness of tone begotten of a new experience.

“Well?”

“That’s all.”

“How could you know whether they are wicked or not?” he burst out angrily.  “Do you suppose that they would show you the iniquity of their hearts?”

“Why, Ephraim, you’ve always stood up for them before!”

He gave a sort of snort.  “I never stood up for them by making eyes at my hands and cooing out my words.”

She looked up in entire bewilderment.

“It doesn’t matter what I mean,” he added.  “What did they say?  What did they do?  Tell me.  If I’d known these fellows had come back, do you suppose I’d have let you go?”

“You are so strange,” she said.  “They did nothing but just bring me home and hold the umbrella, and Joseph Smith said he knew he’d been a bad man and didn’t know anything.  I thought you’d be interested to hear about them, Ephraim.”

“I should have thought you’d had too much self-respect to allow him to talk to you like that.  Of course he was trying to work on your feelings.”

“No, he wasn’t, Ephraim.  You are quite as unjust as my aunt to-day.  He wasn’t trying to work on my feelings.  He was just—­well, he was sorry that my frock got so wet, and he just happened to say the other thing.  I am sure—­”

Her conviction concerning the naturalness of Smith’s conduct and the Quaker’s sincerity had arisen in the presence of each, and was not now to be ascribed to any particular word or action which she could remember and repeat.

“Oh, he was sorry your frock was splashed, was he?  And the other fellow they call Halsey, was he concerned about that too?”

“Who told you that his name was Halsey?” The interest of her tone was unmistakable.

“That is his name, and he must be a degraded fellow to take up with Smith.”

She saw that Ephraim’s clothes were very wet; he must have walked far.  She attributed his exhausted look entirely to fatigue, and his ill-temper to the same cause.  “Mr. Halsey seemed quite good and in earnest, like the people that come to see Mr. Finney when he stays here, asking about saving their souls, as if their souls were something quite different from the other part of them; and, Ephraim, I have often wanted to ask you, but I didn’t like to.  You don’t believe what aunt and uncle do, do you?  Aunt talks as if you didn’t believe.  Do you think”—­her voice trembled—­“do you think that I ought to think about my soul—­that way?”