Mrs. Anderson felt that the piece of invective which she was about to undertake, was not to be taken in hand unadvisedly, “but reverently, discreetly, and in the fear of God.”  And so she paused, and Julia fumbled the tassel of the window-curtain, and trembled with the chill of expectation.  And Mrs. Abigail continued to debate how she might make this, which would doubtless be her last outburst before the day of judgment, her masterpiece—­worthy song of the dying swan.  And then she hoped, she sincerely hoped, to be able by this awful coup de main to awaken Julia to a sense of her sinfulness.  For there was such a jumble of mixed motives in her mind, that one could never distinguish her sincerity from her hypocrisy.

Mrs. Anderson’s conscience was quite an objective one.  As Jonas often remarked, “she had a feelin’ sense of other folkses unworthiness.”  And the sins which she appreciated were generally sins against herself.  Julia’s disobedience to herself was darker in her mind than murder committed on anybody else would have been.  And now she sat deliberating, not on the limit of the verbal punishment she meant to inflict—­that gave her no concern—­but on her ability to do the matter justice.  Even as a tyrannical backwoods school-master straightens his long beech-rod relishfully before applying it.

Not that Mrs. Anderson was silent all this time.  She was sighing and groaning in a spasmodic devotion.  She was “seeking strength from above to do her whole duty,” she would have told you.  She was “agonizing” in prayer for her daughter, and she contrived that her stage-whisper praying should now and then reach the ears of its devoted object.  Humphreys remained seated, pretending to read the copy of “Josephus,” but watching the coming storm with the interest of a connoisseur.  And while he remained Jonas determined to stay, to keep Julia in countenance, and he beckoned to Cynthy to stay also.  And Samuel Anderson, who loved his daughter and feared his wife, fled like a coward from the coming scene.  Everybody expected Mrs. Anderson to break out like a fury.

But she knew a better plan than that.  She felt a new device come like an inspiration.  And perhaps it was.  It really seemed to Jonas that the devil helped her.  For instead of breaking out into commonplace scolding, the resources of which she had long since exhausted, she dropped upon her knees, and began to pray for Julia.

No swearer ever curses like the priest who veils his personal spites in official and pious denunciations, and Mrs. Anderson had never dealt out abuse so roundly and terribly and crushingly, as she did under the guise of praying for the salvation of Julia’s soul from well-deserved perdition.  But Abigail did not say perdition.  She left that to weak spirits.  She thought it a virtue to say “hell” with unction and emphasis, by way of alarming the consciences of sinners.  Mrs. Anderson’s prayer is not reportable.  That sort of profanity is too bad