"She and James are murderers and liars and thieves and are wholly
engaging. Sue is fast learning from them the habits of their underworld
and is asleep upstairs now with Harriet's silver and jade chain, which
she brought home with her without the knowledge of the owner this
afternoon. What are you going to do about them? I take it you intend to
build a kingdom in and of their hearts."
"Weed 'em, like Dabney and I did your dahlia bank ten times at least
this spring. You didn't help with the dahlias, but maybe you will with
the young Tenderloiners." His eyes entreated mine with a soft radiance
that almost made me dizzy.
"I wouldn't know weeds from flowers, 'Minister,'" I answered with
prompt denial of his plea, but with a soft use of the children's name
for him.
"I don't always know. Let's study botany--together," he again hazarded
daringly, and from the tenderness that suddenly curved his strong mouth
I knew my soft answer had hit its mark. "Are you coming to the
dedication of the chapel a week from Sunday?" He asked me the question
directly and with all his softness gone and a commanding note in his
voice and direct look. His jeweled eyes were so deep back under their
dull gold brows that between the bars of black lashes they looked like
stars shining down through a radiant night. They threw their rays
directly down into my heart and I could see that their owner was reading
the hieroglyphics of my uncertainties and that I could not hide them
from him.
"I am not," I answered him with the frankness that his gaze compelled.
"I'll not dedicate it until you help me do it and--" he was saying
quietly and positively, when Billy broke in over the excluding shoulder.
Billy really adores Gregory Goodloe, but he enjoys going to the limit of
his ministerial endurance. Over that limit he has never stepped and he
never will; none of them ever will, for there is that in the Harpeth
Jaguar which commands the very essence of respect for himself as well as
his cloth.
"Say, Parson, what's that about the dedication of the chapel?" he asked,
as he twirled his champagne glass to break a few bubbles. "Charlotte and
Nickols are going to give Harriet and me that tennis dressing down
Sunday week if you don't need us to dedicate with."
"No, I won't need you," answered the Reverend Mr. Goodloe, in an easy
agreeable voice, but that had in it the note that he always uses to make
Billy halt. "I'm not going to dedicate it yet."
"Why?" came in a perfect chorus.
"I've been working night and day on that altar cloth because I depended
on you to know the date of the dedication of your own church. I have
danced only once this week," said Letitia Cockrell, with her usual bland
directness.