“What I say is,” declared the farmer quite in-consequently, “a man
must be able to lay his troubles ’pon the Lord. I don’t mean his
work, but his troubles; and go home and shut the door and be happy
with his wife and children. Now, I tell you that for months--iss,
years--after Bob was born I kept plaguing myself in the fields,
thinking that some harm might have happened to the child. Why, I
used to make an excuse and creep home, and then if I see’d a blind
pulled down you wouldn’t think how my heart’d go thump; and I’d stand
wi’ my head on the door-hapse an’ say, ‘If so be the Lord have
took’n, I must go and comfort Susan--not my will, but Thine, Lord--
but, Lord, don’t ’ee be cruel this time!’ And then find the cheeld
right as ninepence and the blind only pulled down to keep the sun off
the carpet. After a while my wife guessed what was wrong--I used to
make up such poor twiddling pretences. She said, ‘Look here, the
Lord and me’ll see after Bob; and if you can’t keep to your own work
without poking your nose into ours, then I married for worse and not
for better.’ Then it came upon me that by leaving the Lord to look
after my job I’d been treating Him like a farm labourer. It’s the
things you can’t help he looks after--not the work.”
A few evenings later there came a knock at the door, and Lizzie, who
went to open it, returned with the Bryanite skipping behind her.
“Blessings be upon this here house!” he cried, cutting a sort of
double shuffle on the threshold. He shook hands with the farmer and
his wife, and nodded toward Taffy. “So you’ve got Parson Raymond’s
boy here!”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Joll; and turned to Taffy. “He’ve come to pray a
bit: perhaps you would rather be in the parlour?”
Taffy asked to be allowed to stay; and presently Mr. Pascoe had them
all down on their knees. He began by invoking God’s protection on
the household; but his prayer soon ceased to be a prayer. It broke
into ejaculations of praise--“Friends, I be too happy to ask for
anything--Glory, glory! The blood! The precious blood! O deliverance! O
streams of redemption running!” The farmer and his wife began to chime
in--“Hallelujah!” “Glory!” and Lizzie Pezzack to sob. Taffy, kneeling
before a kitchen chair, peeped between his palms, and saw her shoulders
heaving.
The Bryanite sprang to his feet, overturning the settle with a crash.
“Tid’n no use. I must skip! Who’ll dance wi’ me?”
He held out his hands to Mrs. Joll. She took them, and skipped once
shamefacedly. Lizzie, with flaming cheeks, pushed her aside.
“Leave me try, mis’ess; I shall die if I don’t.” She caught the
preacher’s hands, and the two leapt about the kitchen. “I can dance
higher than mis’ess!” Farmer Joll looked on with a dazed face.
“Hallelujah!” “Amen!” he said at intervals, quite mechanically.
The pair stood under the bacon rack and began to whirl like
dervishes--hands clasped, toes together, bodies leaning back and
almost rigid. They whirled until Taffy’s brain whirled with them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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