pleasant and cheerful? Why won't you be jolly, as Tom Piper's aunt is?"

"I dare say I ain't pleasant," said Rachel, "as my own nephew twits me
with it. There is some folks that can be cheerful when their house is
a-burnin' down before their eyes, and I've heard of one young man that
laughed at his aunt's funeral," directing a severe glance at Jack; "but
I'm not one of that kind. I think, with the Scriptures, that there's a
time to weep."

"Doesn't it say there's a time to laugh, too?" asked Mrs. Harding.

"When I see anything to laugh about, I'm ready to laugh," said Aunt
Rachel; "but human nater ain't to be forced. I can't see anything to
laugh at now, and perhaps you won't by and by."

It was evidently quite useless to persuade Rachel to
cheerfulness, and the subject dropped.

The tea things were cleared away by Mrs. Harding, who then sat down to
her sewing. Aunt Rachel continued to knit in grim silence, while Jack
seated himself on a three-legged stool near his aunt, and began to
whittle out a boat, after a model lent him by Tom Piper, a young
gentleman whose aunt has already been referred to.

The cooper took out his spectacles, wiped them carefully with his
handkerchief, and as carefully adjusted them to his nose. He then took
down from the mantelpiece one of the few books belonging to his
library--"Dr. Kane's Arctic Explorations"--and began to read, for the
tenth time, it might be, the record of these daring explorers.