!"

Grandma then gave Grandpa a meaning look, and put her fingers on her
lips.

"Well, Cap'n, I saw more rabbit tracks," replied Lovell, innocently
amused at the ludicrousness of the old Captain's speech. "I did,
rather--ahem!--yes, I saw more rabbit tracks--ahem!--ahem!" He gave his
chair a desperate hitch gunward. "I don't suppose they ever do such a
thing, where you live, Miss Hungerford, as to go--ahem!--to go
sleigh-riding, now, do they, Miss Hungerford?"

"Why, yes," I said; "they always do in the winter. I haven't been home
through the winter for a year or two past, but I remember what splendid
times we used to have."

I was thinking particularly of a certain snow-fall, that came when I was
seventeen years old, and John Cable had just returned from College, with
a moustache and patriarchal airs.

Some grinning recollections of the past were also floating through
Grandpa's mind. The look of reprehensible mirth was still in his eyes,
and he showed his teeth, which gleamed oddly white and strong in contrast
with his grizzled countenance.

"I remember"--he began.

"Pa," said Grandma, with an expressive wink of one eye, and only part of
her face visible around the corner of the doorway, through which Madeline
had already disappeared; "pa--I wish you'd come out here a minute, now--I
want to see ye."

"Wall, wall, can't ye see me here, ma? What makes ye so dreadful anxious
to see me all of a sudden?" inquired Grandpa. But his face did not lose
its thoughtful illumination. "Wall, as I was a tellin' ye, teacher," he
went on; "I was only a little shaver then--a little shaver--and my father
had one of those 'ere pungs, as we used to call 'em, that he used to ride
around in--and he was a dreadful man to swear, my father was,
teacher--Lordy, how he would swear!----"

"Pa!" said the great calm voice at the door; "I'm a waitin' for you to
come out, so't I can shet the door."

"Wall, wall, ma, shet the door if ye want to, I've no objections to
havin' the door shet----and we had an old hoss, teacher. Lordy, how lean
he was, lean as a skate, and----"

"Bijonah Keeler!"

"Yis, yis, I'm a comin', ma, I'm a comin'." And wonderful indeed, I
thought must have been the tale, which, even under these exasperating
circumstances, kept Grandpa's face a-grin as he ran and shuffled towards
the door.

The door was quickly closed behind him by other hands than his own, and
then I observed that Lovell's chair had been drawn into