“That is our old battle-field, Rose. But you would have to be consistent, and I do assure you, if you talked as Shakspere talked, you would make a sensation.”
“Come, adjourn that skirmish,” said Archibald Lyndsay, who had been rearranging the canoeloads.
Then the voice, to which others were as whispers, roared:
“Who’s for where, Mr. Lyndsay?”
“All right. Tom, your voice is really getting broken. Come, Margaret,--this way dear.”
“It’s so,” said Tom. “I kin speak bigger if I try,”—this to Miss Lyndsay, apologetically, as he aided her into the boat. “Fact is, Miss, I was twins, like them boys, and Bill he died. He hadn’t no voice to count on. It’s main useful when you’re drivin’ logs.”
“What a baby he must have been in a quiet family!” whispered Anne to Rose and Ned. “Imagine it!”
“I didn’t understand what he said, Aunt Anne,” remarked the boy.
“I do not think he quite understood himself. Perhaps he had a vague notion that he had to talk so as to represent the dead brother, ‘who hadn’t no voice to count on.’”
“I like it,” remarked Rose. “Yes, papa.”