Friday the minister went to see her.  It was in the forenoon, and she was at the barn door shelling peas for dinner.  She looked up and returned his salutation with dignity, then she went on with her work.  She did not invite him in.  The saintly expression of her face remained fixed, but there was an angry flush over it.

The minister stood awkwardly before her, and talked, She handled the peas as if they were bullets.  At last she looked up, and her eyes showed the spirit that her meek front had covered for a lifetime.

“There ain’t no use talkin’, Mr. Hersey,” said she.  “I’ve thought it all over an’ over, an’ I believe I’m doin’ what’s right.  I’ve made it the subject of prayer, an’ it’s betwixt me an’ the Lord an’ Adoniram.  There ain’t no call for nobody else to worry about it.”

“Well, of course, if you have brought it to the Lord in prayer, and feel satisfied that you are doing right, Mrs. Penn,” said the minister, helplessly.  His thin gray-bearded face was pathetic.  He was a sickly man; his youthful confidence had cooled; he had to scourge himself up to some of his pastoral duties as relentlessly as a Catholic ascetic, and then he was prostrated by the smart.

“I think it’s right jest as much as I think it was right for our forefathers to come over from the old country ’cause they didn’t have what belonged to ’em,” said Mrs. Penn.  She arose.  The barn threshold might have been Plymouth Rock from her bearing.  “I don’t doubt you mean well, Mr. Hersey,” said she, “but there are things people hadn’t ought to interfere with.  I’ve been a member of the church for over forty year.  I’ve got my own mind an’ my own feet, an’ I’m goin’ to think my own thoughts an’ go my own ways, an’ nobody but the Lord is goin’ to dictate to me unless I’ve a mind to have him.  Won’t you come in an’ set down?  How is Mis’ Hersey?”

“She is well, I thank you,” replied the minister.  He added some more perplexed apologetic remarks; then he retreated.

He could expound the intricacies of every character study in the Scriptures, he was competent to grasp the Pilgrim Fathers and all historical innovators, but Sarah Penn was beyond him.  He could deal with primal cases, but parallel ones worsted him.  But, after all, although it was aside from his province, he wondered more how Adoniram Penn would deal with his wife than how the Lord would.  Everybody shared the wonder.  When Adoniram’s four new cows arrived, Sarah ordered three to be put in the old barn, the other in the house shed where the cooking-stove had stood.  That added to the excitement.  It was whispered that all four cows were domiciled in the house.

Towards sunset on Saturday, when Adoniram was expected home, there was a knot of men in the road near the new barn.  The hired man had milked, but he still hung around the premises.  Sarah Penn had supper all ready.  There were brown-bread and baked beans and a custard pie; it was the supper that Adoniram loved on a Saturday night.  She had on a clean calico, and she bore herself imperturbably.  Nanny and Sammy kept close at her heels.  Their eyes were large, and Nanny was full of nervous tremors.  Still there was to them more pleasant excitement than anything else.  An inborn confidence in their mother over their father asserted itself.