"Oh, never mind, 'Liza," said Maggie, knowing the narrator's weakness. "Settle the minister first, an' you can talk Toronto all day after."
"My! but you're anxious about him, Maggie! That's a bad sign. Well, as I was sayin', I stayed all fall, you know, an' Maria she was bound and determined I'd see an' hear everything that was worth while, an' her and James they jist trotted me 'round till I was near dead. James Turner does make Maria an awful kind man, I will say, though I ain't got much use for men. Well, one night we went to a high-toned concert, got up by a lot o' college fellows. I tell you there's where you see the fine lookin' chaps! Don Neil couldn't hold a candle to them, the way they was dressed up, reg'lar doods every one o' them, an' the style! If I'd been a young thing like one o' you girls now, I'd a lost my heart a dozen times over. But if you'd a' seen the fellows that took part in the concert, you'd a' died, the way they were rigged up! They all came a-flippin' an' a-floppin' out onto the platform, an' besides their pants an' coats, every mother's son o' them had on some kind of a long cloak, for all the world like Mrs. Duffy's black dolman. An' they had the curiousest things on their heads, jist exactly like the black shingles that was flyin' 'round here the night the sawmill burned down!"
"Why, they were college gowns and caps," said Sarah; "Don Neil and Allan Fraser are both going to get them."
"Well, don't I know that, you young upstart. An' Mrs. Fraser's in an awful way about Allan wearin' one, too, but that don't prove that they didn't look jist like the mischief itself."
"Dear me, do they wear them kind o' things out amongst other folks?" inquired Mrs. Hamilton in mild alarm. She had supposed that such raiment would be confined to the seclusion of one's own bed chamber.
"Indeed, they jist do, Mrs. Hamilton. If Jessie an' Don Neil makes up this little lovers' quarrel they've got up lately, you'll have him comin' flappin' down the hill to see her in one o' them next winter. But reelly, you wouldn't believe what awful trollops they were; an' if I couldn't turn out a stylisher lookin' wrapper an' a mighty better fit, too, I'd go an' choke myself."
"You'll choke before you get this story told, if you don't quit talkin'," said the plain-spoken Maggie. "Did the minister have a wrapper on?"
But Miss Cotton had a fine eye to the structure of a story. "Oh, I'm comin' to him, at the right time. Well, as I was sayin', there was a whole swarm o' these fellows came floppin' an' flounderin' onto the platform an' they all squat down in a long row with their wrappers an' shingles on, an' started to play like all possessed on what they call bangjoes or some such tomfoolery."
"Banjoes," corrected Sarah. "Lots of the boys and girls play them at the High School."
The orator paid no attention.