oyster to me, what they would have thought!"

Eph laughed, too, and, surely enough, just then a stout, light-haired,
rather plain-looking young woman came up to the south window and leaned
in. She had on a sun-bonnet, which had not prevented her from securing a
few choice freckles. She had been working with a trowel in her
flower-garden.

"What's the matter?" she said, nodding easily to Eph. "What do you two
always find to laugh about?"

"Ephraim was feeding me with spoon-meat," said Aunt Lyddy, pointing to
the basket, which looked like a basket of anthracite coal.

"It looks like spoon-meat," said Susan, and then she laughed too. "I'll
roast some of them for supper," she added, "a new way that I know."

Eph was not invited to stay to supper, but he stayed, none the less:
that was always understood.

"Well! Well! Well!" said Joshua, coming to the door-step, and washing
his hands and arms just outside, in a tin basin. "I thought I see you
set down a parcel of oysters--but there was seaweed over 'em, and I don'
know's I could hev said they was oysters; but then, if the square
question hed been put to me, 'Mr. Carr, be them oysters or not?' I
s'pose I should hev said they was; still, if they'd asked me how I
knew--"

"Come, come, father!" said Aunt Lyddy, "do give poor Ephraim a little
peace. Why don't you just say you thought they were oysters, and done