Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/147

 cheerily, "Don't let him scare you, Sym!" The boys made it up afterward, but our little street was quite lively for a time.'

"Now as to that," went on Mrs. Potts, affecting to deliberate, "could we not better have described that as 'a disgraceful street brawl'? And yet I find no word of deprecation. It is told, indeed, with a regrettable flippancy. Flippancy, I may note again, mars the following item: 'They tell a good story of old Sarsius Lambert over at Bethel. His wife was drowned a couple of weeks ago, and Link Talbot went to break the news to the old man. "Uncle Sarsh," says Link, "your wife is drowned. She fell in at the ford, and an hour later they found her two miles down-stream." "Two miles an hour!" said Uncle Sarsius, in astonishment. "Well, well, she floated down quite lively, didn't she?"'

"You will pardon me, I trust," said Mrs. Potts, "if I say it would have been better to speak of the grief-stricken husband and to conclude with a fitting sentiment such as 'the proudest monuments to the sleeping dead are reared in the hearts of the living.'"

"I'll put it in next week," ventured Solon, meekly. "I didn't think of it at the time."

"Ah, but one should always think, should one not?" asked Mrs. Potts, almost sweetly. "By thinking, for example, you could elevate your sheet by eliminating certain misapplied colloquialisms. Here I read: 'The rain last week left the streets in a frightful state. The mud simply won't jell.'"