Lionel leaned against the counter, and went into a burst of laughter. The woman told it so quaintly, with such perfect good faith in the advent of the white donkey! She did not much like the mirth. As to that infidel Peckaby, he indulged in sundry mocking doubts, which were, to say the least of them, very mortifying to a believer.
“What’s your opinion, sir?” she suddenly asked of Lionel.
“Well,” said Lionel, “my opinion—as you wish for it—would incline to the suspicion that your friend, Brother Jarrum, deceived you. That he invented the fable of the white donkey to keep you quiet while he and the rest got clear off.”
Mrs. Peckaby went into a storm of shrieking sobs. “It couldn’t be! it couldn’t be! Oh, sir, you be as cruel as the rest! Why should Brother Jarrum take the others, and not take me?”
“That is Brother Jarrum’s affair,” replied Lionel. “I only say it looks like it.”
“I telled Brother Jarrum, the very day afore the start took place, that if he took off my wife, I’d follor him on and beat every bone to smash as he’d got in his body,” interposed Peckaby, glancing at Lionel with a knowing smile. “I did, sir. Her was out”—jerking his black thumb at his wife—“and I caught Brother Jarrum in his own room and shut the door on us both, and there I telled him. He knew I meant it, too: and he didn’t like the look of a iron bar I happened to have in my hand: I saw that. Other wives’ husbands might do as they liked; but I warn’t a going to have mine deluded off by them Latter Day Saints. Were I wrong, sir?”
“I do not think you were,” answered Lionel.
“I’d Latter Day ’em! and saint ’em too, if I had my will!” continued wrathful Peckaby. “Arch-deceiving villuns!”
“Well, good day, Mrs. Peckaby,” said Lionel, moving to the door. “I would not spend too much time, were I you, looking out for the white donkey.”
“It’ll come! it’ll come!” retorted Mrs. Peckaby in an ecstasy of joy, removing her hands from her ears, where she had clapped them during Peckaby’s heretical speech. “I am proud, sir, to know as it’ll come, in spite of opinions contrairey and Peckaby’s wickedness; and I’m proud to be always a looking out for it.”
“This is never it, is it, drawing up to the door now?” cried Lionel, with gravity.
Something undoubtedly was curvetting and prancing before the door; something with a flowing white tail. Mrs. Peckaby caught one glimpse, and bounded from her seat, her chest panting, her nostrils working. The signs betrayed how implicit was the woman’s belief; how entirely it had taken hold of her.
Alas for Mrs. Peckaby! alas for her disappointment! It was nothing but that deceiving animal again, Farmer Blow’s white pony. Apparently the pony had been so comfortable in the forge, that he did not care to leave it. He was dodging about and backing, wholly refusing to go forward, and setting at defiance a boy who was striving to lead him onwards. Mrs. Peckaby sat down, and burst into tears.
“Now, then,” began Peckaby, as Lionel departed, “what’s the reason my tea ain’t ready for me?”
“Be you a man to ask?” demanded she. “Could I red up, and put on kettles, and see to ord’nary work, with my inside a turning?”
Peckaby paused for a minute, “I’ve a good mind to wallop you!”
“Try it,” she aggravatingly answered. “You have not kep’ your hands off me yet, to be let begin now. Anybody but a brute ’ud comfort a poor woman in her distress. You’ll be sorry for it when I’m gone off to New Jerusalem.”
“Now look here, Suke,” said he, attempting to reason with her. “It’s quite time as you left off this folly: we’ve had enough on’t. What do you suppose you’d do at Salt Lake? What sort of a life ’ud you lead?”
“A joyful life!” she responded, turning her glance sky-ward. “Brother Jarrum thinks as the head saint, the prophet hisself, has a favour to me! Wives is as happy there as the day’s long.”
Peckaby grinned: the reply amused him much. “You poor ignorant creatur,” cried he, “you have got your head up in a madhouse; and that’s about it. You know Mary Green?”
“Well?” answered she, looking surprised at this divertisement.
“And you know Nancy from Verner’s Pride as is gone off,” he continued, “and you can just set on and think of half-a-dozen more nice young girls about here. How ’ud you like to see me marry the whole of ’em, and bring ’em home here? Would the house hold the tantrums you’d go into, d’ye think?”
“You hold your senseless tongue, Peckaby! A man ’ud better try and bring home more nor one wife here! The law ’ud be on to him.”
“In course it would,” returned Peckaby. “And the law knowed what it was about when it made itself into the law. A place with more nor one wife in it ’ud be compairable to nothing but that blazing place you’ve heerd on as is under our feet, or the Salt Lake City.”
“For shame, you wicked man.”
“There ain’t no shame in saying that; it’s truth,” composedly answered Peckaby. “Brother Jarrum said, didn’t he, as the wives had a parlour a-piece. Why do they? ’Cause they be obleeged to be kep’ apart, for fear o’ damaging each other, a tearing and biting and scratching, and a pulling of eyes out. A nice figure you’d cut among ’em! You’d be a wishing yourself home again afore you’d tried it for a day. Don’t you be a fool, Susan Peckaby.”
“Don’t you!” retorted she. “I wonder you ain’t afraid o’ some judgment falling on you. Lies is sure to come home to people.”
“Just take your thoughts back to the time as we had the shop here, and plenty o’ custom in it. One day you saw me just a kissing of a girl in that there corner—leastways you fancied as you saw me,” corrected Peckaby, coughing down his slip. “Well, d’ye recollect the scrimmage? Didn’t you go a’most mad, never keeping your tongue quiet for a week, and the place hardly holding of ye? How ’ud you like to have eight