“Many of ’em goes out,” was the satisfactory reply of Brother Jarrum.  “But servants here are not servants there.  Who’d be a servant if she could be a missis?  Wouldn’t a handsome young female prefer to be her master’s wife than to be his servant?”

Mary Green giggled; the question had been pointedly put to her.

“If a female servant chooses to remain a servant, in course she can,” Brother Jarrum resumed, “and precious long wages she’d get; eighty pound a year—­good.”

A movement of intense surprise amid the audience.  Brother Jarrum went on—­

“I can’t say I have knowed many as have stopped servants, even at that high rate of pay.  My memory won’t charge me with one.  They have married and settled, and so have secured for themselves paradise.”

This might be taken as a delicate hint that the married state, generally, deserved that happy title.  Some of the experiences of those present, however, rather tended to accord it a less satisfactory one, and there arose some murmuring.  Brother Jarrum explained—­

“Women is not married with us for time, but for eternity—­as I tried to beat into you last night.  Once the wife of a saint, their entrance into paradise is safe and certain.  We have not got a old maid among us—­not a single old maid!”

The sensation that this information caused, I’ll leave you to judge; considering that Deerham was famous for old maids, and that several were present.

“No old maids, and no widders,” continued Brother Jarrum, wiping his forehead, which was becoming moist with the heat of argument.  “We have respect to our women, we have, and like to make ’em comfortable.”

“But if their husbands die off?” suggested a puzzled listener.

“The husband’s successor marries his widders,” explained Brother Jarrum.  “Look at our late head and prophet, Mr. Joe Smith—­him that appeared in a vision to our present prophet, and pointed out the spot for the new temple.  He died a martyr, Mr. Joe Smith did—­a prey to wicked murderers.  Were his widders left to grieve and die out after him?  No.  Mr. Brigham Young, he succeeded to his honours, and he married the widders.”

This was received somewhat dubiously; the assemblage not clear whether to approve it or to cavil at it.

“Not so much to be his wives, you know, as to be a kind of ruling matrons in his household,” went on Brother Jarrum.  “To have their own places apart, their own rooms in the house, and to be as happy as the day’s long.  They don’t—­”

“How they must quarrel, a lot of wives together!” interrupted a discontented voice.

Brother Jarrum set himself energetically to disprove this supposition.  He succeeded.  Belief is easy to willing minds.