"I can take care of myself, I guess," he said; "I used
to camp out when I was a boy, and I can cook pretty well,
mother always said." He looked at her wistfully; but the
uncomfortable-ness of such an arrangement did not strike her.
In her desire for a new emotion, her eagerness to FEEL--
that eagerness which is really a sensuality of the mind--
she was too absorbed in her own self-chosen hardships to think
of his; which were not entirely self-chosen.
"I think I can find enough to do," he said; "the Shakers need
an able-bodied man; they only have those three old men."
"How do you know that?" she asked, quickly.
"I've been to see them twice this winter," he said.
"Why!" she said, amazed, "you never told me!"
"I don't tell you everything nowadays, 'Thalia," he said, briefly.
In those two visits to the Shakers, Lewis Hall had been treated with
great delicacy; there had been no effort to proselytize, and equally
there had been no triumphing over the accession of his wife; in fact,
Athalia was hardly referred to, except when they told him that they would
take good care of her, and when Brother Nathan volunteered a brief summary
of Shaker doctrines--"so as you can feel easy about her," he explained:
"We believe that Christ was the male principle in Deity, and Mother Ann
was the female principle. And we believe in confession of our sins,
and communion with the dead--spiritualism, they call it nowadays--
and in the virgin life.
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