Page:While Caroline Was Growing.djvu/185



"Is Old Grumpy bad to-day?" Caroline inquired.

"Bad? Child, that old fellow is just about the worst I ever saw, and I've seen plenty. What's on his mind the Lord knows, but it's a lesson to us all to keep our tempers and not have secret thoughts preying on us night and day! Just now he told me the truth for once. 'I'm so worried I can't digest, Luella,' he says to me, 'and I digest so damnably that it's enough to worry an archangel!' There—I shouldn't 'a' said that before you, but—"

"Oh, I know 'damn,' Luella," Caroline assured her, "and it isn't as if you said it purposely, anyway; you just repeated it. It makes all the difference."

"I guess it does," Luella assented, "s'long's you understand it. But then, you understand everything, more or less, 'seems to me. Where you picked it all up at your age—"

"What's that, Luella? Who is talking out there? What's going on now behind my back?"

A petulant and gray-haired gentleman rushed out at them, very much like a wiry Scotch terrier,