“Unfeeling Janice!”
“’T is a good thing for the oafs and ploughboys of Brunswick. For there are none better.”
“Philemon Hennion?”
“‘Your servant, marms,’” mimicked Janice, catching up a hair brush and taking it from her head as if it were a hat, while making a bow with her feet widely spread. “‘Having nothing better ter do, I’ve made bold ter come over ter drink a dish of tea with you.’” The girl put the brush under her arm, still further spread her feet, put her hands behind some pretended coat-tails, let the brush slip from under her arms, so that it fell to the floor with a racket, stooped with an affectation of clumsiness which seemed impossible to the lithe figure, while mumbling something inarticulate in an apparent paroxysm of embarrassment,—which quickly became a genuine inability to speak from laughter.
“Janice, thee should turn actress.”
“Oh, Tibbie, lace my bodice quickly, or I shall burst of laughing,” breathlessly begged the girl.
“Janice,” said her mother, entering, “how often must I tell thee that giggling is missish? Stop, this moment.”
“Yes, mommy,” gasped Janice. Then she added, after a shriek and a wriggle, “Don’t, Tabitha!”
“What ails thee now, child? Art going to have an attack of the megrims?”
“When Tibbie laces me up she always tickles me, because she knows I’m dreadfully ticklish.”