“Well, well!” he said, laying down his fork, and smiling innocently; “what be you all laughin' at? Not but what I allers like to hev folks laugh—but then, I did n't see nothin' to laugh at. Still, perhaps they was suthin' to laugh at that I didn't see; sometimes one man 'll be lookin' down into his plate, all taken up with his victuals, and others, that's lookin' around the room, may see the kittens frolickin', or some such thing. 'T ain't the fust time I 've known all hands to laugh all to once-t, when I didn't see nothin'.”
Susan helped him again, and secured another brief respite.
“Ephraim,” said he, after a while, “you ain't skilled to cook oysters like this, I don't believe. You ought to git married! I was sayin' to Susan t'other day—well, now, mother, hev I said anything out o' the way? Well, I don't s'pose 't was just my place to have said anything about gitt'n' married, to Ephraim, seein's—”
“Come, come, father,” said Aunt Lyddy, “that'll do, now. You must let Ephraim alone, and not joke him about such things.”
Meanwhile Susan had hastily gone into the pantry to look for a pie, which she seemed unable at once to find.
“Pie got adrift?” called out Joshua. “Seems to me you don't hook on to it very quick. Now that looks good,” he added, when she came out.
“That looks like cookin'! All I meant was, 't Ephraim ought not to be doin' his own cookin'—that is, 'f you can call it cookin. But then, of course, 'tis cookin'—there's all kinds o' cookin'. I went cook myself, when I was a boy.”
After supper, Aunt Lyddy sat down to knit, and Joshua drew his chair up to an open window, to smoke his pipe. In this vice Aunt Lyddy encouraged him. The odor of Virginia tobacco was a sweet savor in her nostrils. No breezes from Araby ever awoke more grateful feelings than did the fragrance of Uncle Joshua's pipe. To Aunt Lyddy it meant quiet and peace.
Susan and Eph sat down on the broad flag door-stone, and talked quietly of the simple news of the neighborhood, and of the days when they used to go to school, and come home, always together.
“I did n't much think then,” said Eph, “that I should ever bring up where I have, and get ashore before I was fairly out to sea!”