"Perhaps we'd better," said she, laughing.
"All right; we'll let her make the tea—we don't have to drink it."
"You," said the widow, "are like Governor Wright, who said to Mrs. Perkins, 'Madam, I will praise your tea, but hang me if I'll drink it.'"
"I'm going to teach the primer class in the morning," said Polly, as she filled the tea-kettle.
"Look out, young man," said Mrs. Vaughn, turning to the teacher.
"In a short time she'll be thinking she can teach you."
"I get my first lesson to-night," said the young man. "She's to teach me dancing."
"And you've no fear for your soul?"
"I've more fear for my body," said he, glancing down upon his long figure. "I've never lifted my feet save for the purpose of transportation. I'd like to learn how to dance because Deacon Tower thinks it wicked and I've learned that happiness and sin mean the same thing in his vocabulary."
"I fear you're a downward and backsliding youth," said the widow.
"You know what Ezra Tower said of Ebenezer Fisher, that he was 'one o' them mush-heads that didn't believe in hell'? Are you one o' that kind?" Proclaimers of liberal thought were at work there in the north.