On that road there was no
place for the absurdity of red stockings! And so, in the absence of all
elation, only the grim sense of duty in the doing soothed him as he made
his way to Solomon Hatch's cottage.
On the back porch he found Judy deftly taking butter out of the churn,
and watched her while she worked the soft lumps with a wooden paddle
in a large yellow bowl. Though he would have been the last to suspect
it--for passion like temptation appeared to him to beset the beautiful
alone--Judy, in her homely way, was also a crucible, and the little
earthern pot of her body was near to bursting at the moment from the
violence of the flames within. She had just seen a black coated figure
in a red gig spin by on the road, and for one blissful minute, she had
permitted herself a flight of fancy, in which she was the bride, not of
Abel Revercomb, but of Orlando Mullen. To sit in that red wheeled gig,
touching the sleeve of his black coat! To stitch the frayed seams in is
silk waistcoat! To iron his surplices as only she could iron when the
divine fury seized her! To visit his poor and afflicted! To lift her
swooning gaze every Sunday, with a sense of possession, to that pulpit!
For a minute only the rapture lasted, and all the time, she went on
placidly making butter in the large yellow bowl.
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