On the other side of the verandah above Uncle Jake stretched a passion vine, where a thick row of belated fruit hung like pretty pale-green eggs, and evil entering Andrew's mind, he remarked to me—
"Wouldn't it be just bosker if one of them fell on his old nut," and going out he returned with a pair of orange clippers.
"Where's Carry got to?" asked grandma.
"I saw her out there doing a mash with Larry Witcom," said Andrew.
"Now, do you think there'll be anything in that?" interestedly asked Mrs Bray. "I suppose she'd be glad to ketch anything for a home of her own."
"Well, it's to be hoped the home she'd catch with him would be better than some of the meat we've caught from him lately—it was as tough as old boots," put in Dawn.
At this point Andrew succeeded in disturbing Uncle Jake—succeeded beyond expectation. Uncle Jake had just sucked his fuzzy 'possum-grey moustache in the noisy manner peculiar to him, and was raising his tea again, when he was struck by the passion fruit, causing him to let fall the cup.
"Just like you! On the clean boards! Carry will be pleased. I'm glad it's not my week in the house," said Dawn. What Uncle Jake said is unfit for insertion in a record so respectable as this is intended to be, and grandma seemed to grow too agitated for verbal utterance, but her facial expression was very fiery indeed as Andrew and Uncle Jake withdrew and settled their little score in a manner unknown to the company.
"Well, it's an ill wind that don't blow nobody no good, and though there's a cup broke, it's got us rid of the men, and there's never no talking in comfort where they are," remarked Mrs Bray, who had a facility for constructing sentences containing several negatives. Two, we learn in syntax, have the effect of an affirmative, but there being no reference to a repletion, only that her utterances were unmistakably plain, Mrs Bray might have reduced one to wondering the purport of her remarks.
"Did you hear the latest?" she said, laughing boisterously. "You don't know the people yet," she continued, turning to me, "half of 'em want scalding."