"Wasn't there no saints?" breathlessly asked Susan Peckaby, who had elbowed herself to the front.
"Saints!" echoed Grind. "Yes, they be saints! A iniketous, bad-doing, sensitive lot. I'd starve on a crust here, sooner nor I'd stop among 'em. Villains!"
Poor Grind probably substituted the word "sensitive" for another, in his narrow acquaintance with the English language. Susan Peckaby seemed to resent this new view of things. She was habited in the very plum-coloured gown which had been prepared for the start, the white paint having been got out of it by some mysterious process, perhaps by the turpentine suggested by Chuff. It looked tumbled and crinkled, the beauty altogether gone out of it. Her husband, Peckaby, stood behind, grinning.
"Villains, them saints was, was they?" said he.
"They was villains," emphatically answered Grind.
"And the saintesses?" continued Peckaby--"What of them?"
"The less said about 'em the better, them saintesses," responded Grind.
"We should give 'em another name over here, we should. I had to leave my eldest girl behind me," he added, lifting his face in a pitying appeal to Mr. Verner's. "She warn't but fifteen, and one of them men took her, and she's his thirteenth wife."
"I say, Grind," put in the sharp voice of Mrs. Duff, "what's become of Nancy, as lived up here?"
"She died on the road," he answered. "She married Brother Jarrum in New York--"
"Married Brother Jarrum in New York!" interrupted Polly Dawson tartly.
"You are asleep, Grind. It was Mary Green as married him. Leastways, news, that she did, come back to us here."
"He married 'em both," answered Grind. "The consekence of which was, that the two took to quarrelling perpetual. It was nothing but snarling and fighting everlasting. Nancy again Mary, and Mary again her. We hadn't nothing else with 'em all the way to the Salt Lake city, and Nancy, she got ill. Some said 'twas pining; some said 'twas a in'ard complaint as took her; some said 'twas the hardships killed her--the cold, and the fatigue, and the bad food, and the starvation. Anyhow, Nancy died."
"And what became of Mary?" rather more meekly inquired Mrs. Peckaby.
"She's Jarrum's wife still. He have got about six of 'em, he have. They _be_ saints, they be!"
"They bain't as bad off as the saintesses," interrupted Mrs. Grind.
"They has their own way, the saints, and the saintesses don't. Regular cowed down the saintesses be; they daredn't say as their right hand's their own. That poor sick lady as went with us, Miss Kitty Baynton--and none on us thought she'd live to get there, but she did, and one of the saints chose her. She come to us just afore we got away, and she said she wanted to write a letter to her mother to tell her how unhappy she was, fit to die with it. But she knowed the letter could never be got to her in England, cause letters ain't allowed to leave the city, and she must stop in misery for her life, she said; for she couldn't never undertake the journey back again; even if she could get clear away; it would kill her. But she'd like her mother to know how them Mormons deceived with their tales, and what sort of a place New Jerusalem was."
Grind turned again to Lionel.
"It is just blasphemy, sir, for them to say what they do; calling it the holy city, and the New Jerusalem. Couldn't they be stopped at it, and from deluding poor ignorant people here with their tales?"
"The only way of stopping it is for people to take their tales for what they are worth," said Lionel.
Grind gave a groan. "People is credilous, sir, when they think they are going to better theirselves. Sir," he added, with a yearning, pleading look, "could I have a bit of work again upon the old estate, just to keep us from starving? I shan't hanker after much now; to live here upon the soil will be enough, after having been at that Salt Lake city. It's a day's wonder, and 'ud take a day to tell, the way we stole away from it, and how we at last got home."
"You shall have work, Grind, as much as you can do," quietly answered Lionel. "Work, and a home, and, I hope, plenty. If you will go there,"--pointing to the tables--"with your wife and children, you will find something to eat and drink."
Grind clasped his hands together in an attitude of thankfulness, tears streaming down his face. They had walked from Liverpool.
"What about the ducks, Grind?" called out one of the Dawsons. "Did you get 'em in abundance?"
Grind turned his haggard face round.
"I never see a single duck the whole time I stopped there. If ducks was there, we didn't see 'em."
"And what about the white donkeys, Grind?" added Peckaby. "Be _they_ in plenty?"
Grind was ignorant of the white donkey story, and took the question literally. "I never see none," he repeated. "There's nothing white there but the great Salt Lake, which strikes the eyes with blindness--"
"Won't I treat you to a basting!"
The emphatic remark, coming from Mrs. Duff, caused a divertisement, especially agreeable to Susan Peckaby. The unhappy Dan, by some unexplainable cause, had torn the sleeve of his new jacket to ribbons.
He sheltered himself from wrath behind Chuff the blacksmith, and the company began to pour in a stream towards the tables.
The sun had sunk in the west when Verner's Pride was left in quiet; the gratified feasters, Master Cheese included, having wended their way home. Lionel was with his wife at the window of her dressing-room, where he had formerly stood with Sibylla. The rosy hue of the sky played upon Lucy's face. Lionel watched it as he stood with his arm round her.
Lifting her eyes suddenly, she saw how grave his looked, as they were bent upon her.
"What are you thinking of, Lionel?"
"Of you, my darling. Standing with you here in our own home, feeling that you are mine at last; that nothing, save the hand of Death, can part us, I can scarcely yet believe in my great happiness."
Lucy raised her hand, and drew his face down to hers. "I can," she whispered. "It is very real."
"Ay, yes! it is real," he said, his tone one of almost painful intensity. "God be thanked! But we waited. Lucy, _how_ we waited for it!"