And the mischievous Harvey Dole--could it be the same youth who stood there now with tearful eyes, chanting his longings to be pure and sanctified and heavenly. This merry youth had a predilection for those religious songs which contained the deepest and saddest sentiment. "Now, what's the matter with you, Harvey?" said Emily Gaskell, who had but just dropped in. "You know you'll go along hum to-night stunin' my cats! You know what a precious nice time you're calculatin' to have, about two months from now, up in my trees stealin' my peaches, you young devil. 'Wash you from your sins!' Humph! Yes, you need it bad enough, Lord knows! A good poundin', and boilin', and sudzin', you need--and a good soakin' in the bluein' water over night, too." Emily's eyes sparkled with keen though good-natured satire. There was a flood of crimson color in her cheeks, not entirely the effect of her brisk walk in the open air. She had a spasm of coughing, which she endured as though such discomforts had become quite a matter of course, merely remarking when she had recovered herself sufficiently to speak:-- "Thar', that'll last me for one spell, I guess." "Won't you set, Emily?" said Grandma. "No," said Emily. "I can't. I jest come up to tell my man, there, to go home! Levi is over from West Wallen, and wants to see him. Lord, I didn't know you'd got a party, Miss Keeler!" she continued, glancing with an irresistibly comical expression about the room. "Oh, no! we ain't got no party," said Grandma Keeler, pleasantly. "They jest happened to drop in along." "Wall now, I should think there'd ben a shower and rained 'em all down at once:" again surveying the occupants of the room with a comprehensively critical air that was hardly flattering. "I don't see what on 'arth!" she went on. "Half the time you might ransack Wallencamp from top to bottom, and you'd find everybody a'most somewhere, and nobody to hum! It ain't much like the cake Silvy made last week--she's crazier than ever--'Where's the raisins, Silvy?' says I--I always make it chock full of 'em, and there wasn't one,--'Oh,' says Silvy, 'I mixed 'em up so thorough you can't a hardly find 'em.' 'I guess that's jest about the way the Lord put the idees into your head, Silvy,' says I. 'Bless the Lord!' says that poor fool, as slow and solemn as a minister."