She marched off with Sara Ray, and Peter dropped back to us with
a frightened face.

"What is it I've done to her?" he whispered. "What does that big
word mean?"

"Oh, never mind," I said crossly--for I felt that Peter HAD
disgraced us--"She's just mad--and no wonder. Whatever made you
act so crazy, Peter?"

"Well, I didn't mean to. And I wanted to laugh twice before that
and DIDN'T. It was the Story Girl's stories made me want to
laugh, so I don't think it's fair for her to be mad at me. She
hadn't ought to tell me stories about people if she don't want me
to laugh when I see them. When I looked at Samuel Ward I thought
of him getting up in meeting one night, and praying that he might
be guided in his upsetting and downrising. I remembered the way
she took him off, and I wanted to laugh. And then I looked at
the pulpit and thought of the story she told about the old Scotch
minister who was too fat to get in at the door of it, and had to
h'ist himself by his two hands over it, and then whispered to the
other minister so that everybody heard him.

"'_This pulpit door was made for speerits_'--and I wanted to
laugh. And then Mr. Frewen come--and I thought of her story
about his sidewhiskers--how when his first wife died of
information of the lungs he went courting Celia Ward, and Celia
told him she wouldn't marry him unless he shaved them whiskers
off. And he wouldn't, just to be stubborn. And one day one of