“No, no—’tis those that keep Sunday on Saturday. There’s two in Long
Bradmarsh, but I hope Will won’t go straying into strange paths.”
“You better enlighten him,” said Caleb. “Them as is powerful enough to
carry boxes from Chipstone ain’t allus bright in the brain-pan. Oi count
it ’ud be aukard if he fared to keep Sunday on Saturday, bein’ as he’d
want the Sunday dishes fust and we’d get ’em cold.”
“There’s higher considerations than the stomach,” said Martha severely.
“The stomach ain’t low and it ain’t high,” maintained Caleb. “The Lord
put the stomach in the middle so as we shouldn’t neither worship it nor
forgit it.”
“The only Sunday meal that matters,” persisted Martha, “is the bread and
the wine, and though there’s no Lord’s table nigh, such as I could find
dozens of in London, nor nobody to worship with except you, yet if you
go on scoffing, my duty to my Brethren and Sisters of the synagogue will
be to withdraw from you.”
“And where will you goo?” he asked in alarm.
“I won’t go anywhere—‘withdraw’ only means that it is forbidden to
break bread with you.”
He was relieved. “Oi don’t mind so long as you don’t goo away.”
“And what will you do in the day of Ezekiel thirty-eight, when Gog and
Magog dash themselves to pieces against Israel? And when the eighth of
Daniel comes to pass, and the Great Horn is broken and the Little Horn
stamps upon the host of heaven?”
“Oi count it won’t be just yet,” he said uneasily.
“You count wrong. To my reckoning the two thousand three hundred days of
Daniel are nigh up. In the great day of Isaiah four, when the Tabernacle
rises again with the cloud and smoke and the flaming fire, the people of
God shall rise too from their graves while the others sleep.”
“Then you can wake me up, dear heart,” he said, “bein’ as you’re sure to
be up.”
She shook her head. “_You_ were always up first, sweetheart, but that
day you’ll sleep on and I’ll have no power to rouse you—unless, says
Isaiah, you ‘look unto me and be saved.’ ‘Dust to dust’—that shows
we’re not immortal by nature.”
“But ef it’s comin’ so soon, Oi shan’t be in my grave at all,” he urged
anxiously, “and Oi can push into the Tabernacle.”
“No more easy than for wasps to push into the hive. You’ve seen the bees
push ’em back.”
“But one or two does get in and Oi reckon Oi’ll take hold o’ your skirt,
same as you been readin’ me.”
“I read you there’ll be ten men to take hold of it,” she said.
“Nine other men!” he cried angrily. “But they won’t have no right to
take hold o’ my wife’s skirt.”
“That’s what Zechariah says—‘ten men of all languages.’”
Caleb’s gloom relaxed. “He was thinkin’ o’ Che’msford and sech-like
great places full o’ furriners,” he said decisively. “Here there’s onny
Master Peartree, and the shepherd ain’t a Goloiath. Oi’ll soon get riddy
o’ him, happen he don’t hook hisself to you with his crook.”
“But I’ll pull in Will too,” said Martha.
V
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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