Page:Micheaux - The Conquest, The Story of a Negro Pioneer (1913).djvu/242

 the eyes and I had seen none of it in the eyes of either Mrs. McCraline or Orlean, but I did not like Ethel, and from what little Miss Ankin told me about the Reverend I was inclined to believe that he was likely to be the "devil," and Mrs. Ewis' information regarding Mrs. McCraline was probably inspired by jealousy.

I remembered that back in M—pls the preachers' wives were timid creatures, submissive to any order or condition their "elder" husbands put upon them, submitting too much in order to keep peace, never raising a row over the gossip that came to their ears from malicious "sisters" and church workers. As long as I could remember the colored ministers were accused of many ugly things concerning them and the "sisters," mostly women who worked in the church, but I had forgotten it until I now began hearing the gossip concerning Rev. McCraline.

Orlean, her father and her brother-in-law had begun buying a home on Vernon avenue for which they were to pay four thousand, five hundred dollars. Of this amount three hundred dollars had been paid, one hundred by each of them. It was a nice little place, with eight rooms and with a stone front. Ethel had not paid anything, using her money in preparation for her wedding, which had taken place in September. Claves and her father had spent two hundred on it, which seemed very foolish, and were pinched to the last cent when it was done.

Claves had borrowed five dollars from his brother when they went on the wedding trip, to pay for a taxi to the depot. The wedding tour and honeymoon lasted two weeks and was spent in Racine,