Page:Elmer Gantry (1927).djvu/325

 Mr. Rigg was small, deep-wrinkled, with amused and knowing eyes. He would be, Elmer felt instantly, a good man with whom to drink. His wife's face was that of a girl, round and smooth and blue-eyed, though she was fifty and more, and her laughter was lively.

"Those are folks I can shoot straight with," decided Elmer, and he kept near them.

Rigg hinted, "Say, Reverend, why don't you and your good lady come up to my house after this, and we can loosen up and have a good laugh and get over this sewing-circle business."

"I'd certainly like to." As he spoke Elmer was considering that if he was really to loosen up, he could not have Cleo about. "Only, I'm afraid my wife has a headache, poor girl. We'll just send her along home and I'll come with you."

"After you shake hands a few thousand more times!"

"Exactly!"

Elmer was edified to find that Mr. Rigg had a limousine with a chauffeur—one of the few in which Elmer had yet ridden. He did like to have his Christian brethren well heeled. But the sight of the limousine made him less chummy with the Riggses, more respectful and unctuous, and when they had dropped Cleo at the hotel, Elmer leaned gracefully back on the velvet seat, waved his large hand poetically, and breathed, "Such a welcome the dear people gave me! I am so grateful! What a real outpouring of the spirit!"

"Look here," sniffed Rigg, "you don't have to be pious with us! Ma and I are a couple of old dragoons. We like religion; like the good old hymns—takes us back to the hick town we came from; and we believe religion is a fine thing to keep people in order—they think of higher things instead of all these strikes and big wages and the kind of hell-raising that's throwing the industrial system all out of kilter. And I like a fine upstanding preacher that can give a good show. So I'm willing to be a trustee. But we ain't pious. And any time you want to let down—and I reckon there must be times when a big cuss like you must get pretty sick of listening to the sniveling sisterhood!—you just come to us, and if you want to smoke or even throw in a little jolt of liquor, as I've been known to do, why we'll understand. How about it, Ma?"

"You bet!" said Mrs. Rigg. "And I'll go down to the kitchen, if cook isn't there, and fry you up a couple of eggs, and