He was," said Susan earnestly, "the
very cutest little corpse I ever laid my eyes on. It was very careless
of his mother to leave the fruitatives where he could get them, but she
was well-known to be a heedless creature. One day she found a nest of
five eggs as she was going across the fields to church with a brand new
blue silk dress on. So she put them in the pocket of her petticoat and
when she got to church she forgot all about them and sat down on them
and her dress was ruined, not to speak of the petticoat. Let me see--
would not Tod be some relation of yours? Your great grandmother West was
a MacAllister. Her brother Amos was a MacDonaldite in religion. I am
told he used to take the jerks something fearful. But you look more like
your great grandfather West than the MacAllisters. He died of a
paralytic stroke quite early in life."
"Did you see anybody at the store?" asked Rilla desperately, in the
faint hope of directing Susan's conversation into more agreeable
channels.
"Nobody except Mary Vance," said Susan, "and she was stepping round as
brisk as the Irishman's flea."
What terrible similes Susan used! Would Kenneth think she acquired them
from the family!
"To hear Mary talk about Miller Douglas you would think he was the only
Glen boy who had enlisted," Susan went on. "But of course she always did
brag and she has some good qualities I am willing to admit, though I did
not think so that time she chased Rilla here through the village with a
dried codfish till the poor child fell, heels over head, into the puddle
before Carter Flagg's store.
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