Page:The unhallowed harvest (1917).djvu/133

128 Mrs. Tracy swept into the room, with Mrs. Farrar in tow.

"Oh, here you are!" she exclaimed, giving the rector a warm hand-grasp. "I suppose Ruth has been vowing allegiance to your heresies, Mr. Farrar. I can't get her to look at the matter reasonably, and Philip can't either; and her father just smiles and says she's of age and can do as she wants to."

"You'll have to convert Mr. Farrar first, mother," laughed Ruth, "and then let him convert me."

"It would serve you both right," continued the mistress of the house, "if we had Jim Dodder, the blacksmith, here to dine with you, with his three hundred and fifty pound wife who is bald on the back of her head."

"Oh, mother!" protested Ruth, "she doesn't weigh a bit over two hundred."

"Three hundred if she weighs a pound," insisted Ruth's mother. "Why, when she came the other day to call on our cook, the rocking-chair in the maid's sitting-room collapsed under her."

"And shall that be attributed to her for unrighteousness?" asked the rector.

"Now, Mr. Farrar," remonstrated the hostess, "don't try to evade the issue. You know what I'm driving at. Your ideas of social equality are perfectly ridiculous, I declare! Perfectly ridiculous!"

Mr. Farrar made no attempt to defend himself. Nor did he feel in the least hurt. He was quite accustomed to Mrs. Tracy's blunt, direct way of expressing her opinions. He knew, moreover, that she had the kindest of hearts, and always tempered her criticism with great mercy for her victim.

"Mother's afraid," said Ruth, "that in the new régime she'll have to wear a calico gown and a green sunbonnet to church, so as not to arouse the envy of the proletarians."

"And you'll have to wear them forever, in the New