l as we could, and I am sure we are not bad singers. Mother
slipped out of the room just as we came to

"And vie with Gabriel, while he sings."

She ran as if something had stung her, and she was making for the
hartshorn or some fresh brook-mud. Aunt Clara's face laughed all over,
and I said:

"Come, now, Aunt Clara, you are really irreverent. You began laughing in
meeting, and you are keeping it up over that good book."

"Downright wicked," said Jerusha.

Now I am a Normal graduate, and Jerusha is not yet "finished." That will
account for the greater elegance of my expressions. Aunt Clara paid no
heed to either of us, but laughed on. The most provoking thing in the
world is a laugh that you don't understand. Here was the whole Dorcas
Society laughing through its presidentess, and Aunt Clara joining in the
laugh in meeting, and aggravating the offence by stereotyping the smirk
in her face. In came mother again, evidently afraid to stay out, and not
liking for some reason to stay in. Again we tried the tune, and had just
got to

"And vie with Gabriel, while he sings."

Up jumped mother again, stopping in the door, and holding up a warning
finger to Aunt Clara. That gesture spurred my curiosity to the utmost
point. As to my beloved parent's running in and out, _that_ I should not
have heeded. She is like Martha, careful of many things. She is unlike
Martha, for she wants no assistance; but when the rest of us are
disposed to be quiet, she _will_ keep flitting here and there, and is
vexed if we follow. If father is talking, and has just reached the point
of his story, off she goes, as if the common topic were nothing to her.
Father says she is a perturbed spirit. But then he is always saying
queer things, which poor mother cannot understand. Aunt Clara seems to
know him a great deal better. I wonder he had not taken to wife a woman
like Aunt Clara. He would have taken _her_, I suppose, if she were not
his own sister.

I besought mother, as she fled, to tell me what ailed aunty. "Don't ask
_me_," she answered. "The dear only knows. As for me, I have given up
thinking, let alone asking, what either your aunt or your father would
be at." And away she went, perturbed-spirit fashion, and Aunt Clara
laughed louder than ever. Indeed, before she had only chuckled and
silently shaken her sides; now she broke out into a scream.

"Well, I never!" she said. "That flounce of your mother's out of the
room was certainl