g the
photographs. In vain Cecily implored him to stop. It was too good fun
to give up. For the next half-hour the dialogue ran after this fashion,
while Peter and Felix and I, and even the Story Girl, suffered agonies
trying to smother our bursts of laughter--for Great-aunt Eliza could see
if she couldn't hear:

CECILY, SHOUTING:--"That is Mr. Joseph Elliott of Markdale, a second
cousin of mother's."

DAN:--"Don't brag of it, Sis. He's the man who was asked if somebody
else said something in sincerity and old Joe said 'No, he said it in my
cellar.'"

CECILY:--"This isn't anybody in our family. It's little Xavy Gautier who
used to be hired with Uncle Roger."

DAN:--"Uncle Roger sent him to fix a gate one day and scolded him
because he didn't do it right, and Xavy was mad as hops and said 'How
you 'spect me to fix dat gate? I never learned jogerfy.'"

CECILY, WITH AN ANGUISHED GLANCE AT DAN:--"This is Great-uncle Robert
King."

DAN:--"He's been married four times. Don't you think that's often
enough, dear great-aunty?"

CECILY:--"(Dan!!) This is a nephew of Mr. Ambrose Marr's. He lives out
west and teaches school."

DAN:--"Yes, and Uncle Roger says he doesn't know enough not to sleep in
a field with the gate open."

CECILY:--"This is Miss Julia Stanley, who used to teach in Carlisle a
few years ago."

DAN:--"When she resigned the trustees had a meeting to see if they'd ask
her to stay and raise her supplement. Old Highland Sandy was alive then
and he got up and said, 'If she for go let her for went. Perhaps she for
marry.'"

CECILY, WITH THE AIR OF A MARTYR:--"This is Mr. Layton, who used to
travel around selling Bibles and hymn books and Talmage's sermons."

DAN:--"He was so thin Uncle Roger used to say he always mistook him for
a crack in the atmosphere. One time he stayed here all night and went to
prayer meeting and Mr. Marwood asked him to lead in prayer. It had been
raining 'most every day for three weeks, and it was just in haymaking
time, and everybody thought the hay was going to be ruined, and old
Layton got up and prayed that God would send gentle showers on the
growing crops, and I heard Uncle Roger whisper to a fellow behind
me, 'If somebody don't choke him off we won't get the hay made this
summer.'"

CECILY, IN EXASPERATION:--"(Dan, shame on you for telling such
irreverent stories.) This is Mrs. Alexander Scott of Markdale. She has
been very sick for a long time."

DAN:--"Uncle Roger s