"WHY, you've found another verse about bread!" said Grandma, then her eyes grew thoughtful.
"Association is a queer thing, children; association of ideas, I mean." (Some people might think that Grandma Burton used large words in talking to her grandchildren; but the fact was, she did not try very hard to make her words little. Not that she selected long ones; her language was always simple; but words which they would be likely to hear among cultured people, or to see in their books, she aimed to use in talking with them. If they did not understand a word, they were always at liberty to ask its meaning. The consequence was, they were quite intelligent children, and the phrase, "association of ideas," did not trouble the older ones in the least. As for little Sarah she did not bother her brains about it, yet awhile.)
"Now you wouldn't suppose," continued Grandma, "that there was anything in that verse to make me think of a large, old-fashioned farm-house kitchen, with a wooden bowl on the table, and a wooden spoon hanging over it, and old-fashioned dishes arranged on the shelf above it, and a woman in a straight dress, and neck handkerchief, bending over the bread-bowl, and a little girl with a high-necked apron on, standing before an old-fashioned churn, moving the dasher up and down, yet I see all those things as plainly as though it was yesterday morning, instead of sixty odd years ago."
"What makes it, Grandma? What happened?" And Marion settled little Sarah more comfortably on the hassock, and straightened herself, ready to listen.
"Why, it is this association of ideas I was speaking of; my memory of that verse about bread is mixed in with all those scenes. I was the little girl moving the dasher. You see it was this way:
"Mother was very sick that spring, and father had to take her to the city to be under the care of a great doctor, and he had to stay with her; so we children were scattered. I went to spend a week with aunt Pat Worcester."
"What a horrid name for a woman!" said Rollo.
"Oh! it was a nice name. Patriot, the whole name was, but almost everybody called her aunt Pat. She was a splendid woman. People all respected her. She was my father's aunt and he had lived with her a good deal when he was a boy and loved her very much; he liked to have me stay with her. That winter, or spring, it was, she had a nephew living with her; a great red-headed boy named Jeremiah, only we always said Jerry. I didn't like him very well. He was a smart, bright boy, and might have been pleasant, only he was always teasing children younger than himself, telling them things which were not true, threatening to drown them, you know, or bury them alive, or something of that sort; things that he had no more notion of doing than he had of flying; but they were too young to know it, poor things, and he had that kind of evil nature which seemed to be pleased with making others uncomfortable. He didn't trouble me much, because I kept close to aunt Pat; but once in awhile he would wink his great eyes at me, and tell me he was going to swallow me, some day, when aunt Pat wasn't looking."
Grandma's children all laughed at this, and Marion questioned: "Why, Grandma, you surely didn't believe that, did you?"
"No, child; not exactly, of course; and yet I couldn't help feeling kind of creepy all over, when I was in danger of being left alone with him, and I thought of his great mouth. It is my opinion that little folks suffer from these things more than older ones have any idea. I should despise a boy who would descend to so mean a trick as trying to tease one younger than himself."