Just as if we had waited to be told this, when in fact
Bessie and I had been consulting about our bonnets and dresses in the most
grave and mature manner for years past, and arranging our future on plans
that for variety and agreeability could not have been surpassed had we
been brought up on the _Arabian Nights_ and Moore's _Poems_, instead of
Baxter's _Saint's Rest_ and Pollok's _Course of Time_.
"There are several questions of vital importance that have been growing
daily stronger in my mind," said my uncle Pennyman. "My friend Thomas
Haines has a gift in clearing points and expounding meanings; so that I
feel it to be for my mind's edifying and my soul's profit to go to him for
counsel."
I was delighted to hear this. I wanted to see Bessie, and I blessed the
bond that united these good brothers in Israel and drew us together so
often. Mr. Haines was good at texts, and my uncle was wonderfully expert
at dreams. Mr. Haines was a great dreamer, and my uncle constantly
stumbled over passages needing elucidation. So we lived in harmonious
intercourse, and Bessie and I talked of all our plans and delights while
they got themselves entangled in obscurities with a commentary under each
arm.
It would have appeared, from Mr. Haines' dreams, that Bessie's mother had
been a most fussy and bothering lady, though I was told by the
housekeeper, who knew her well, that she was the mildest and most timid of
little wives while living.
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