“And where will you goo?” he asked in alarm.
“I won’t go anywhere—‘withdraw’ only means that it is forbidden to break bread with you.”
He was relieved. “Oi don’t mind so long as you don’t goo away.”
“And what will you do in the day of Ezekiel thirty-eight, when Gog and Magog dash themselves to pieces against Israel? And when the eighth of Daniel comes to pass, and the Great Horn is broken and the Little Horn stamps upon the host of heaven?”
“Oi count it won’t be just yet,” he said uneasily.
“You count wrong. To my reckoning the two thousand three hundred days of Daniel are nigh up. In the great day of Isaiah four, when the Tabernacle rises again with the cloud and smoke and the flaming fire, the people of God shall rise too from their graves while the others sleep.”
“Then you can wake me up, dear heart,” he said, “bein’ as you’re sure to be up.”
She shook her head. “_You_ were always up first, sweetheart, but that day you’ll sleep on and I’ll have no power to rouse you—unless, says Isaiah, you ‘look unto me and be saved.’ ‘Dust to dust’—that shows we’re not immortal by nature.”
“But ef it’s comin’ so soon, Oi shan’t be in my grave at all,” he urged anxiously, “and Oi can push into the Tabernacle.”
“No more easy than for wasps to push into the hive. You’ve seen the bees push ’em back.”
“But one or two does get in and Oi reckon Oi’ll take hold o’ your skirt, same as you been readin’ me.”
“I read you there’ll be ten men to take hold of it,” she said.
“Nine other men!” he cried angrily. “But they won’t have no right to take hold o’ my wife’s skirt.”
“That’s what Zechariah says—‘ten men of all languages.’”
Caleb’s gloom relaxed. “He was thinkin’ o’ Che’msford and sech-like great places full o’ furriners,” he said decisively. “Here there’s onny Master Peartree, and the shepherd ain’t a Goloiath. Oi’ll soon get riddy o’ him, happen he don’t hook hisself to you with his crook.”
“But I’ll pull in Will too,” said Martha.
But Jinny did not appear on Friday with the musical instrument. Only the unexpected arrived—in the shape of Bundock. That royal messenger was visibly hipped as he delivered the letter to Will.
“A woman’s writing!” he observed reproachfully. “That means dragging me here time and again!”