DAN:—“He’s been married four times. Don’t you think that’s often enough, dear great-aunty?”
CECILY:—“(Dan!!) This is a nephew of Mr. Ambrose Marr’s. He lives out west and teaches school.”
DAN:—“Yes, and Uncle Roger says he doesn’t know enough not to sleep in a field with the gate open.”
CECILY:—“This is Miss Julia Stanley, who used to teach in Carlisle a few years ago.”
DAN:—“When she resigned the trustees had a meeting to see if they’d ask her to stay and raise her supplement. Old Highland Sandy was alive then and he got up and said, ‘If she for go let her for went. Perhaps she for marry.’”
CECILY, WITH THE AIR OF A MARTYR:—“This is Mr. Layton, who used to travel around selling Bibles and hymn books and Talmage’s sermons.”
DAN:—“He was so thin Uncle Roger used to say he always mistook him for a crack in the atmosphere. One time he stayed here all night and went to prayer meeting and Mr. Marwood asked him to lead in prayer. It had been raining ‘most every day for three weeks, and it was just in haymaking time, and everybody thought the hay was going to be ruined, and old Layton got up and prayed that God would send gentle showers on the growing crops, and I heard Uncle Roger whisper to a fellow behind me, ‘If somebody don’t choke him off we won’t get the hay made this summer.’”
CECILY, IN EXASPERATION:—“(Dan, shame on you for telling such irreverent stories.) This is Mrs. Alexander Scott of Markdale. She has been very sick for a long time.”
DAN:—“Uncle Roger says all that keeps her alive is that she’s scared her husband will marry again.”
CECILY:—“This is old Mr. James MacPherson who used to live behind the graveyard.”