Page:A Colonial Wooing.djvu/190

 were religious phrases so glibly rolled from his tongue; for, if worked up to something near the fever heat, Matthew could talk easily and well, and after painful preparation had, at times, become eloquent. Robert Pearson had been wicked enough to say that Matthew's memory was remarkable, and the sermons preached in Philadelphia had been carried without damage to the Crosswicks Valley; but then Robert was of the world, worldly, the Friends insisted.

At the appointed hour, ten o'clock, the Friends had gathered in the house and were seated as Ruth wished. A dozen women in the west room and perhaps as many men in the room and hall, the door being open and the seats so arranged about it that words spoken in one room could be heard in the other. Ruth entered late, and never had she appeared to greater advantage. Her hair was not held in much restraint; as was then the fashion, matted to the temples like so many square inches of yellow canvas, such as samplers were worked upon. Her clear skin was well set off by the roses in her