Berry pronounced, "and never come to any satisfaction.
It seems to me the better they be the more
sharp-like they get. There's your sister, Gord --
the way she does about the house, and with all the
children to tend, is a caution to Dunkards. She
does all you could ask and again. But it just seems
she can't be pleasant with it. Now there's Nickles,
next place to me, his old woman's not worth a pinch
of powder, but she is the nicest, easiest spoken body
you'd meet in a day on a horse. You mind Effie
when she was young, Gord -- she just trailed song all
over the house, but it wasn't hardly a year before she
got penetrating as a musket. Rose is just like her
-- she's all taffy now on that young man, but in a
little spell she'll clamp down on him."

Gordon had a swift vision of Lettice sharpening
with the years; there sounded in prospect on his ear
an endless roll of acidulous remarks, accompanied
by the fretful whine of children, intensified by Mrs.
Caley's lowering silence. He thought of the change
that had overtaken his sister Effie, remarked by her
husband, the change from a trim, upright figure to
the present stooped form, the turning of that voice
brimming with song to a continuous, shrill troubling.

The cool, disdainful countenance of Meta Beggs
returned to him: time, he divined, would not mark
her in so sorry a fashion; to the last she would remain
slimly rounded, graceful; her hands, like mag-

[[226]]

p225 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p226w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p227

v?