"Now, now, Jack, now, bubby, lemme tell you," expostulated the old man, his jaw quivering painfully as he spoke, and his wrinkled face showing, in the glimmer of the lantern, at once grotesque and piteous, encircled as it was by the brilliant hues of a little shawl of Mrs. Larrabee's, in which his head was tied up for protection against the weather, and which was surmounted by his hat. "Ye dunno how durned hard it war ter git that much. This hyar Henrietty Timson hev got us down on half rations, mighty short commons. 'Tain't like 'twar whenst you-uns lived with us, Jack. Oh my! Oh my, no!" and he shook his queerly upholstered head as he sat quaking and shivering on a ledge of the rock. He impressed Larrabee as much out of place,--so habituated was he to the sight of the old man in the chimney corner,--as the oven, or pot, or crane, or any other naturalized appurtenance of the fireside might have been. He let his veinous old shaking hands fall on his knees with a gesture deeply significant of grief. "I wisht ter Gawd," he cried, "ez S'briny war hyar!" He pronounced her name as if she were a sort of minor providence, as indeed she had been to him. "Leetle as ye hed, ye mought hev brung it sooner," grumbled Jack, stuffing the half of a very fat, very heavy biscuit into his mouth. "Law, Jack," cried the old man, "we-uns air plumb 'feared ter leave the house sooner,--even arter all war bedded up for the night. That thar 'oman hev got her pryin' nose in every mortal thing; 'pears ter me the longest, sharpest nose I even seen," he added injuriously, and with sudden sprightly interest, "ain't it, Tawm?" His fellow-sufferer from its pointed inquisitiveness had seemed about to fall asleep in a heavy, shapeless lump, but he roused himself at this to add his testimony with some sincere acridity. "Longes' an' sharpes' _I_ ever seen," he protested thickly, "an' I hev known 'em p'inted an' drawn out to _de_-straction." His snore followed so promptly that one might have doubted whether he had spoken at all; his remark presented the phenomenon of a waking parenthesis, as it were, in the midst of the somnolent text. "I tell ye, it's good fur S'briny ter go, ter let we-uns savor how we miss her," said the old man. "Sech a house, Jack, sech quar'lin' an' scufflin' an' tormentin', f'om mornin' till night,--crowdin' _Me_ up on the h'a'thstone, an' shovin' _my_ cheer, an' talkin' 'bout useless cumberers, whenst I hev been treated with sech _re_-spec' by S'briny Lar'bee ez ef I hed been her own dad, stiddier jes' her husband's step-dad,--sech _re_-spec' an' hot vittles, an' the fus' sarved, an' the bes' o' everything!" His old face flushed with the recollection of the recent indignities offered him. "The pa'son tells ye ter lean on the Lord. Ef ye ain't got the grace ter do that, S'briny Lar'bee's a mighty good help!" For the life of him, Jasper Larrabee could not harden his heart.