"I can't stand this," said Eph to himself; "I don't wonder that they
always used to put Joshua off at the first port, when he tried to go
coasting. They said he talked them crazy with nothing.

"I'll go into the house and see Aunt Lyddy," he said, aloud. "I'm
loafing this afternoon."

"All right! all right!" said Joshua. "Lyddy'll be glad to see ye--that
is, as glad as she would be to see anybody," he added, reaching out for
a pole. "Now, I don' s'pose that sounds very well; but still, you know
how she is--she allus likes to hev folks to talk, and then she's allus
sayin' talkin' wears on her; but I ought not to say that to you, because
she allus likes to see you--that is, as much as she likes to see
anybody--in fact, I think, on the whole--"

"Well, I'll take my chances," said Eph, laughing, and he opened the gate
and went in.

Joshua's wife, whom everybody called Aunt Lyddy, was oscillating in a
rocking-chair in the kitchen, and knitting. It was currently reported
that Joshua's habit of endlessly retracting and qualifying every idea
and modification of an idea which he advanced, so as to commit himself
to nothing, was the effect of Aunt Lyddy's careful revision.

"I s'pose she thought 'twas fun to be talked deef when they was
courtin'," Captain Seth had once sagely remarked. "Prob'ly it sounded
then like a putty piece on a seraphine; but I allers cal'lated she'd git
her fill of it, sooner or later. You most gin'lly git your fill o' one
tune."