"
"About the election, you mean?"
"Yes. It troubles me, and I am sure it troubles the Squire. What about
yourself, Grace?" and a singularly sad smile went with the query and a
side glance at his friend's face. He had been uneasy about him since
Grace had bent a little in the House of Rimmon.
"Oh, Rivers, the roof has got to leak. I have kept away from Mrs.
Penhallow. I can't accept her help and then preach against her party,
and--I mean to do it. I've wrestled with this little sin and--I don't say
I wasn't tempted--I was. Now I am clear. We Baptists can stand what water
leaks down on us from Heaven."
"You mean to preach politics, Grace?"
"Yes, that's what I mean to do. Oh! here comes Mrs. Penhallow."
They had met in front of Josiah's shop. As Mrs. Penhallow approached, Mr.
Grace discovering a suddenly remembered engagement hurried away, and
Rivers went with her along the rough sidewalk of Westways.
"I go away to-morrow with Leila," she said, "and Mr. Penhallow goes to
Pittsburgh. We shall leave John to you for at least a week. He will give
you no trouble. He has quite lost his foreign boyish ways, and don't you
think he is like my husband?"
"He is in some ways very like the Squire."
"Yes, in some things--I so rarely leave home that this journey to
Baltimore with Leila seems to me like foreign travel.
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