It'll be all I
can do, though--he's on the rampage these days, and I've got my
hands full, I tell you."
"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, and glared fiercely at Caroline and
Henry D. Thoreau.
"Nothin's goin' on behind your back that I know of, Mr. Wortley,"
Luella returned composedly.
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