Christian Science -- Fiction; People with disabilities -- Fiction
"Why, yes," answered Mrs. Winchester. "Miss Yancey said she would send
for us."
"Miss Yancey? Miss Sue or Miss Sallie Yancey? Fat lady with snappin’
brown eyes?"
"Yes, that describes her."
"The one that’s just been to New York with the colonel’s children?"
"Yes."
"Oh, well, that’s Miss Sue. She’ll send all right, but likely’s not
you’ve got to wait awn her. She’s so fat she can’t move fast. Have you
ever heard how the colonel’s little girl was kyored? She went to one of
these here spiritualists and was kyored in a trance, they tell me."
"Ah, is that what they say?" said Mrs. Winchester, in a tone of deep
vexation. She felt insulted to think of so dignified a belief as
Christian Science being confounded with such a thing as spiritualism.
But she realized the absurdity of entering into a defence of a new
religion with the conductor of a waiting train. She had, however,
forgotten what Southern railroads are like.
"Yes’m. They say a lady done it. Jest waved her hands over the child,
and Gladys hopped up and began to shout and sing and pray!"
"My good man," said Mrs. Winchester, "do start your train up. You are
seven hours late as it is!"
"What’s your hurry, ma’am? Everybody expects this train to be late. I
can’t go till my wife’s niece comes along. She wants to go on this
train, and I reckon I know better than to leave her. She’s got a tongue
sharper’n Miss Sue Yancey’s."
Mrs. Winchester turned her majestic bulk on the conductor, intending to
annihilate him with a glance, but he shifted his quid of tobacco to the
other cheek, spat neatly at a passing dog, lifted one foot to a
resting-place on Carolina’s steamer-trunk, and continued, pleasantly:
"Now, that there dust comin’ up the road means business for these parts.
I’d be willin’ to bet a pretty that that is either Moultrie La Grange or
Miss Sue Yancey. But whoever it is, they are sho in a hurry."
Carolina stood looking at the cloud of dust also. Most of the passengers
on the waiting train, with their heads out of the car-windows, were
doing the same. It seemed to be the only energetic and disturbing
element in an otherwise peaceful landscape, and only one or two
passengers, who were obviously from the North and therefore impatient by
inheritance, objected in the least to this enforced period of rest.
"And from here, I’d as soon say it was Moultrie as Miss Sue. They both
kick up a heap of dust in one way or another, on’y Moultrie, he don’t
raise no dust talking. If it _is_ Moultrie, he’ll be mighty sore at
bein’ away when the train come in, on’y I reckon he didn’t look for her
so soon. We was thirteen hours late yestiddy."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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