CHAPTER VI

DEEP DIGGING


And in another twinkling of eyes, both of mine and hers, I had taken her
bundle from her, seated her in the largest rocking chair, and she had
untied her bonnet strings, which denoted that she had come for a genuine
visit.

"Well, dearie, dearie me, the sight of you is good for tired eyes,
Charlotte," she bumbled in her rich, deep old voice. As she spoke she
tucked a white wisp of a curl back into place beneath the second water
wave that protruded from under the little white widow's ruche in her
bonnet and continued to beam at me. "I met Nellie Morgan and her
Annarugans hurrying to pray a pardon from Mr. Goodloe for that rock
which might have killed him, if thrown an inch to the right, instead of
only nicking that yellow head of his, the Lord be praised!"

"What was that same Lord doing when he let the rock fly from
Charlotte's hand to within an inch of the Reverend Mr. Goodloe's life,
Mother Spurlock?" I asked her, with the old warfare over the same old
subject rising at the very first minute of our meeting. I have wondered
sometimes in the last few years if the wrestling with me over her faith
was not ordained for the purpose of strengthening Mother Spurlock's
powers of patient argument. She is the only person in the world to whom