ain't to be relied
on. I never found her so." Her spirits had risen. She knew how exactly
she was imitating aunt Luceba's mode of speech. The tones were
dramatically exact, albeit of a more resonant quality. "Auntie's voice
is like suet," she thought. "Mine is vinegar. _But I've got it!_" A
merry devil assailed her, the child of dramatic triumph. She spoke with
decision: "Won't you come in?"

The parson crossed the sill, and waited courteously for her to precede
him; but Isabel thought, in time, of her back breadth, and stood aside.

"You go fust," said she, "an' I'll shet the door."

He made his way into the ill-lighted sitting-room, and began to unpin
his shawl.

"I ain't had my bunnit off sence I come," announced Isabel, entering
with some bustle, and taking her stand, until he should be seated,
within the darkest corner of the hearth. "I've had to turn to an' clear
up, or I shouldn't ha' found a spot as big as a hin's egg to sleep in
to-night. Maybe you don't know it, but my niece Isabel's got no more
faculty about a house 'n I have for preachin'--not a mite."

The parson had seated himself by the stove, and was laboriously removing
his arctics. Isabel's eyes danced behind her spectacles as she thought
how large and ministerial they were. She could not see them, for the
spectacles dazzled her, but she remembered exactly how they looked.
Everything about him filled her with glee, now that she was safe, though
within his reach. "'Now, infidel,'" she said noiselessly, "'I have thee
on the hip!'"

The parson had settled himself in his accustomed attitude when making
parochial calls. He put the tips of his fingers together, and opened
conversation in his tone of mild good-will:--

"I don't seem to be able to place you. A relative of Miss Isabel's, did
you say?"

She laughed huskily. She was absorbed in putting more suet into her
voice.

"You make me think of uncle Peter Nudd," she replied, "when he was took
up into Bunker Hill Monument. Albert took him, one o' the boys that
lived in Boston. Comin' down, they met a woman Albert knew, an' he
bowed. Uncle Peter looked round arter her, an' then he says to Albert,
'I dunno 's I rightly remember who that is!'"

The parson uncrossed his legs and crossed them the other way. The old
lady began to seem to him a thought too discursive, if not hilarious.

"I know so many of the people in the various parishes"--he began, but he
was interrupted without compunction.

"