Certainly
Tralee was some distance from the town, but, apart from that, the
new-comers remained incongruous, alien and alone. The handsome, inanimate
girl-wife never appeared by herself in the streets of Askatoon, but
always in the company of her morose husband, whose only human association
seemed to be his membership in the Methodist body so prominent in the
town. Every Sunday morning he tied his pair of bay horses with the
covered buggy to the hitching-post in the church-shed and marched his
wife to the very front seat in the Meeting House, having taken possession
of it on his first visit, as though it had no other claimants.
Subsequently he held it in almost solitary control, because other members
of the congregation, feeling his repugnance to companionship, gave him
the isolation he wished. As a rule he and his wife left the building
before the last hymn was sung, so avoiding conversation. Now and again he
stayed to a prayer-meeting and, doing so, invariably "led in prayer," to
a very limited chorus of "Amens." For in spite of the position which
Tralee conferred on its owner, there was a natural shrinking from "that
wild boar," as outspoken Sister Skinner called him in the presence of the
puzzled and troubled Minister.
This was always a time of pained confusion for the girl-wife. She had
never "got religion," and there was something startling to her
undeveloped nature in the thunderous apostrophes, in terms of the oldest
part of the Old Testament, used by her tyrant when he wrestled with the
Lord in prayer.
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