After Smith and Sydney Rigdon had started westward, Susannah went over to console Emma.  The prophet’s wife was at that time living in a building of which the front part was the general store whence the material needs of the growing church were as far as possible provided.  Susannah passed through between bales of cloths, boxes, and barrels of provisions.  It was dusk; a young man who served in the store carried a candle before her, and the odd-shaped piles of merchandise threw strange moving shadows upon the low beams of the roof and walls.  The young man held the candle to light the way up a straight staircase.  “Mis’ Smith,” he shouted, “here’s Mis’ Halsey come to see you.”

At the top of the staircase Susannah was met by a cooing, creeping baby, who beat with its little fist upon a wicket gate fencing off the stair.

“It was the last thing he did before setting out, to nail that gate together and fasten it up with his own hands, so as I wouldn’t need always to be running after the young one, lest he should fall down the stair.”  It was Emma Smith who spoke; she emerged dishevelled and tearful from an upper room.  “When he has so much to think about and all, and Elder Rigdon waiting for him at the office till he’d finished.  Mr. Smith, he’s always so kind, and he knew as that would be the thing as would give me the most help of anything.”

Emma subsided again into tears—­tears that were the more touching to Susannah because Emma was not like most women; she seldom wept.

“I don’t mean to give way,” Emma continued, “but if it was your husband as had gone, you’d know how it was, and it’s the first time I’ve ever been separate from him so long.”

Susannah sat down with the child in her arms.  When the question was brought home to her she did not believe that temporary separation from Halsey would cause her tears.

Emma began again with an effort at self-control.  “It’s a long way to Jackson County, quite across Missouri.  It’s all Elder Rigdon’s doing, his going just now.”

Susannah found something that she could say here in agreement.  “It may be wrong, but I—­I don’t like Elder Rigdon.”

“Well, of course the way he believed, and all his congregation, when the word was first preached to them makes Joseph think that he must be full of grace.  Ye know, to see Joseph when he’s quite by himself, ye’d be surprised to see how desponding he is by nature.  He’s that desponding he was real surprised, real right down taken by surprise, when he heard that Mr. Rigdon, so clever a minister as he was, and of the Campbellites too, had been baptized and a hundred and twenty-seven of his congregation with him. (That was first off, and ye know how many he’s brought in since.) He could hardly believe it; he says, ’It seems as if I hadn’t any faith at all.’  And that night he couldn’t sleep, but just walked up and down, and two revelations came to him before morning, and one of them addressed to Rigdon, so Joseph knows of course he’s got the right thing in him.  Then his education, too; he’s got a sight more education than Cowdery.  Joseph thinks a deal of education.”