Page:The Delectable Duchy.djvu/69

 my meaning almost afore I start to speak. An' that's a great comfort to a man o' my age. It'll be terrible hard, when I wants to talk, to begin at the beginning every time. There's that old yarn o' mine about Hambly's cow an' the lawn-mowing machine--I doubt that anybody 'll enjoy it so much as you always do; an' I've so got out o' the way o' telling the beginning--which bain't extra funny, though needful to a stranger's understanding the whole joke--that I 'most forgets how it goes."

"We'll see one another now an' then, they tell me. The sexes meet for Chris'mas-trees an' such-like."

"I'm jealous that 'twon't be the same. You can't hold your triflin' confabs with a great Chris'mas-tree blazin' away in your face as important as a town afire."

"Well, I'm going to start along," the old woman decided, getting on her feet; "or else someone 'll be driving by and seeing us."

Jan, too, stood up.

"We may so well make our congees here," she went on, "as under the porter's nose."

An awkward silence fell between them for a minute, and these two old creatures, who for