"To save my soul I can't see what satisfaction you would have got out of
that," he remarked.
"I did--I did. They helped me to be spiritual minded," wailed Judy with
the incoherence of complete despair. If her infatuation was ridiculous,
it occurred to Abel that her courage, at least, was sublime. From a
distance and with brighter hair, she might even have been mistaken for
a tragic example of immortal passion. The lover in his blood pitied her,
but the Calvinist refused to take her seriously.
"Well, if I were you, I'd go in and lie down," he said feeling that it
was, after all, the best advice he could offer her. "You're sick, that's
what's the matter with you, and a cup of tea will do you more good than
hugging that old mill-stone. I know you can't help it, Judy," he added
in response to a gesture of protestation, "you were born that way, and
none of us, I reckon, can help the way we're born." And since it is
easier for a man to change his creed than his inheritance, he spoke in
the tone of stern fatalism in which Sarah, glancing about her at life,
was accustomed to say to herself, "It's like that, an' thar wouldn't be
any justice in it except for original sin.
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