“What brought this one on?” said my father.
“I can’t make out,” said my mother. “I hope you boys did nothing to frighten her, eh? Are you sure you didn’t do one of those dreadful wheels, Jack?”
This I indignantly denied, and Jem supported me.
My mother’s sympathy had been so deeply enlisted, and her report was so detailed, that Jem and I became bored at last, besides resenting the notion that we had been to blame. I gave one look into the strawberry jam pot, and finding it empty, said my grace and added, “Women are a poor lot, always turning up their eyes and having fits about nothing. I know one thing, nobody ’ll ever catch me being bothered with a wife.”
“Nor me neither,” said Jem.
CHAPTER IV.
“The bee, a more adventurous colonist than man.”
W.C. Bryant.
“Some silent laws our hearts will make,
Which they shall long obey;
We for the year to come may take
Our temper from to-day.”—Wordsworth.