in the house," said Dawn. What Uncle Jake said is
unfit for insertion in a record so respectable as this is intended to
be, and grandma seemed to grow too agitated for verbal utterance, but
her facial expression was very fiery indeed as Andrew and Uncle Jake
withdrew and settled their little score in a manner unknown to the
company.

"Well, it's an ill wind that don't blow nobody no good, and though
there's a cup broke, it's got us rid of the men, and there's never no
talking in comfort where they are," remarked Mrs Bray, who had a
facility for constructing sentences containing several negatives. Two,
we learn in syntax, have the effect of an affirmative, but there being
no reference to a repletion, only that her utterances were
unmistakably plain, Mrs Bray might have reduced one to wondering the
purport of her remarks.

"Did you hear the latest?" she said, laughing boisterously. "You don't
know the people yet," she continued, turning to me, "half of 'em want
scalding."

Here she burst into a full flood of gossip regarding the misconduct of
the leading residents; but honest and straightforward though her
communications were, I cannot include them here, for this is a story
for respectable folk, and a transcript of the straight talk of the
most respectable folk would be altogether out of the question. I must
confine myself to the statement that Mrs Bray had found few beyond
reproach, and "the latest," as she termed it, concerned one Dr Tinker,
whose wife--known colloquially as the old Tinkeress--had recently
administered a public horsewhipping to a young lady whom the doctor
had too ardently admired. Mrs Bray had only just unearthed the facts
that day, and was overwhelmingly interested in them.

"I tell you what ought to be done with some people," said grandma when
Mrs Bray halted for breath. "There's no respectability like there used
to be in my young days. In Gool-gool--that's where I was rared--the
people used to take up anythink that wasn't straight. There was a
woman there. She and her husband lived happy and respectable, with no
notion of anythink wrong, till a feller--a blessed feller," grandma
waxed fierce, "that was only sellin' things and making a living out of
honest folk, come to town an' turned her head. I won't say but he was
a fine-lookin' man, had a grand flowin' beard," grandma spread her
hands out on her chest.

"Must have been lovely with a _beard_, especially if it was like Uncle
Jake's!" inter