you silly old Sardine!"

"What's the day of the week, Susan?" my uncle would ask.

"Old Monday, Sossidge," she would say, and add, "I got all my Old
Washing to do. Don't I KNOW it!"...

She had evidently been the wit and joy of a large circle of
schoolfellows, and this style had become a second nature with her. It
made her very delightful to me in that quiet place. Her customary walk
even had a sort of hello! in it. Her chief preoccupation in life was, I
believe, to make my uncle laugh, and when by some new nickname, some new
quaintness or absurdity, she achieved that end, she was, behind a mask
of sober amazement, the happiest woman on earth. My uncle's laugh when
it did come, I must admit was, as Baedeker says, "rewarding." It began
with gusty blowings and snortings, and opened into a clear "Ha ha!"
but in fullest development it included, in those youthful days, falling
about anyhow and doubling up tightly, and whackings of the stomach, and
tears and cries of anguish. I never in my life heard my uncle laugh to
his maximum except at her; he was commonly too much in earnest for that,
and he didn't laugh much at all, to my knowledge, after those early
years. Also she threw things at him to an enormous extent in her resolve
to keep things lively in spite of Wimblehurst; sponges out of stock she
threw, cushions, balls of paper, clean washing, bread; and once up the
yard when they thought that I and the errand boy and the diminutive
maid of all work were safely out of the way, she smashed a boxful of
eight-ounce bottles I had left to drain, assaulting my uncle with a new
soft broom. Sometimes she would shy things at me--but not often. There
seemed always laughter round and about her--all three of us would share
hysterics at times--and on one occasion the two of them came home from