DAN:—“He’s the man who told mother once that he always made his own iodine out of strong tea and baking soda.”
CECILY:—“This is Cousin Ebenezer MacPherson on the Markdale road.”
DAN:—“Great temperance man! He never tasted rum in his life. He took the measles when he was forty-five and was crazy as a loon with them, and the doctor ordered them to give him a dose of brandy. When he swallowed it he looked up and says, solemn as an owl, ‘Give it to me oftener and more at a time.’”
CECILY, IMPLORINGLY:—“(Dan, do stop. You make me so nervous I don’t know what I’m doing.) This is Mr. Lemuel Goodridge. He is a minister.”
DAN:—“You ought to see his mouth. Uncle Roger says the drawing string has fell out of it. It just hangs loose—so fashion.”
Dan, whose own mouth was far from being beautiful, here gave an imitation of the Rev. Lemuel’s, to the utter undoing of Peter, Felix, and myself. Our wild guffaws of laughter penetrated even Great-aunt Eliza’s deafness, and she glanced up with a startled face. What we would have done I do not know had not Felicity at that moment appeared in the doorway with panic-stricken eyes and exclaimed,
“Cecily, come here for a moment.”
Cecily, glad of even a temporary respite, fled to the kitchen and we heard her demanding what was the matter.
“Matter!” exclaimed Felicity, tragically. “Matter enough! Some of you left a soup plate with molasses in it on the pantry table and Pat got into it and what do you think? He went into the spare room and walked all over Aunt Eliza’s things on the bed. You can see his tracks plain as plain. What in the world can we do? She’ll be simply furious.”
I looked apprehensively at Great-aunt Eliza; but she was gazing intently at a picture of Aunt Janet’s sister’s twins, a most stolid, uninteresting pair; but evidently Great-aunt Eliza found them amusing for she was smiling widely over them.