Miss Barry looked up suddenly. "Board!" she repeated explosively. Then, after a silent pause, she added, "Is that what Luella came over for?"
"Probably not; but she mentioned—"
"Yes, I guess she did. She saw Jerry bring you—"
"No, she said she didn't see him bring me."
Miss Barry snorted. "Luella says lots o' things beside her prayers, and if she uses the same kind o' language for them that she does for other folks, I doubt if the Almighty can understand her half the time. I often think the futurists ought to get hold of her and her clothes and her talk."
Mrs. Porter laughed. "Perhaps she was born too soon."
"Indeed she was for her own comfort. Luella's as sentimental as they make 'em, and she still feels twenty. Board with her, indeed! You'd reduce fast enough then, I assure you. Folks have lived with her till they were ready to eat stewed barnacles; and the only way they got along was finally to get her to live somewhere else and let them have the house to themselves. They've done that sometimes, and Luella and her father camped out in the boathouse, I guess; I don't know exactly what they did do with themselves. Tried to get you! Well, I do declare! Luella's nerve is all right, whatever else she may lack."
"What I want to know," laughed Mrs. Porter, "is, when she says the view is 'sumtious,' whether she means 'scrumptious' or 'sumptuous.'"
Miss Barry smiled at her plate. "Luella ought to write a dictionary or a key or something," she said.—"Oh, I don't know what's the matter with women, anyway," she added with a sigh of disgust.
"Why, Miss Barry, what do you mean? They're finer every year! There are more of them every year for us to be proud of."