“Really, John, I had no time. Such a crowd of eels—— Well! whatever she may deserve,” said Mrs. Steele, shaking her head, “I am sure she does not deserve the trouble those fresh air children will bring her. And she—she seems like such a nice old lady.”
“Who’s a nice old lady?” demanded her husband, from the other end of the long table, rather sharply.
“Farmer Caslon’s wife.”
“Humph! I don’t know what she is; I know what he is, however. No doubt of that. He’s the most unreasonable——”
“Well, they’ll have their hands full with all those young ones,” laughed Madge Steele, breaking in upon her father, perhaps because she did not wish him to reveal any further to her guests his ideas upon this topic.
“What under the sun can they do it for?” demanded Lluella Fairfax.
“Just think of troubling one’s self with a parcel of ill-bred children like those orphanage kids,” added Belle Tingley.
“Oh, they do it just to bother the neighbors, of course,” growled Bobbins, who naturally believed all his father said, or thought, to be just right.
“They take a world of trouble on themselves, then, to spite their neighbors,” laughed Mercy Curtis, in her sharp way. “That’s cutting one’s nose off to spite one’s face, sure enough!”
“Goodness only knows why they do it,” began Madge, when Ruth, who could keep in no longer, now the topic had become generally discussed among the young people, exclaimed: