His tone and manner betrayed him no more.
"The head of our sister Elvira is not always set firmly on her shoulders," he remarked, "but I am glad if the Lord has given her grace." "I've been hoping that he'd give grace to our sister Susannah, for she's been writing a letter to say as how she was without faith and wanting to leave us." Smith answered him now only with a cool silence that puzzled his coarser understanding.
"'Twas in our first days here, when a good many of the women were flighty, and Elvira Halsey, she was ill enough to have worked the patience out of any one as they work the milk out of butter, and Sister Susannah came with a letter.

She gave it to me unsealed." "Was she without wax to seal it ?" interrupted Smith in a casual tone.
Darling could not know that the thought of such poverty wrung Smith's heart.
"Waal, I dunno" (which was a lie).

"Mebbe she had no wax--I didn't think of that, but anyhow she gave me the letter.

'Twas too late for the mail; 'twas too heavy for one stamp.

An' I didn't like to tell her, poor thing, that we'd mighty little to spend on stamps.