"A power o' larnin' in a small headpiece," commented Uncle Chirgwin as he
drove home with the girls sitting side by side on his left. "A braave
ch'ice o' words an' a easy knowledge o' the saints as weern't picked up in
a day. Tis well to hear a furriner now an' again. They do widen the grasp
of a man's mind, looking 'pon things from a changed point o' view. Not as
us could be 'spected to be Latiners, yet I seem 'tis very well to listen to
it as chance offers. 'Tis something to knaw 'twas Latin, an' that did I,
though I doubt some o' the good neighbors couldn' tell it for what 'twas,
by no means."
Joan said little about the service, but she praised the Litany from her own
peculiar attitude toward it.
"That be fine prayin'," she said, "with nobody forgot, an' all in black
print so's wance said 'tedn' lost."
After dinner, when Mary had gone to see a friend and the farm people were
dawdling abroad till evening milking-time, Joan made her uncle read the
service through again. This he did comfortably between the whiffs of his
pipe, and Joan answered the responses, cooing them in her sweet voice as
softly as the red and blue pigeons crooned on the roof outside. Drift was
asleep under a hot blaze of afternoon sunshine. Sometimes a child's keen
voice in the road cut the drowsy silence and came to Joan's ears where she
sat, in the best parlor with Uncle Thomas; sometimes slow wheels rumbled up
the hill toward Buryan.
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