heed.

"Now I guess you won't believe me, but mind you, I seen that fellow
before he ever came here. It was when I was in Toronto that fall,
visitin' Maria, an' you'd never guess where I seen him, if you was to
try from now to the crack o' doom!"

She resumed her sewing with the most aggravating coolness.

"Drunk in the street," suggested Maggie.

"Maggie, it's awful to talk about a minister like that!" cried her
mother, weakening her reproof with a laugh.

"Where in the world was it, 'Liza?"

Miss Cotton resumed her oratorical attitude. "Well, mind you, I never
knew myself that I'd ever clapped eyes on him, till night before last,
but his face puzzled the senses out o' me ever since he came here.
Only I'd heard so much about what old McAlpine looked like, that I
thought it was because he looked like him. But if I've told Mrs.
Fraser once, I've told her a dozen times that----"

"Oh, go on with your yarn!" Maggie's dish-cloth was waving impatiently.

"Well, you mind that fall I went to the Exhibition an' stayed with
Maria till near Christmas? My, the sights I did see that time! You
girls ought to take a trip to the city now, why----"

"Oh, never mind, 'Liza," said Maggie, knowing the narrator's weakness.
"Settle the minister first, an' you can talk Toronto all day after."

"My! but you're anxious about him, Maggie! That's a bad sign. Well,
as I was sayin', I stayed all fall, you know, an' Maria she was bound
and determined I'd see an' hear everything that was worth while, an'
her and James they jist trotted me 'round till I was near dead. James
Turner does make Maria an awful kind man, I will say, though I ain't
got much use for men. Well, one night we went to a high-toned concert,
got up by a lot o' college fellows. I tell you there's where you see
the fine lookin' chaps! Don Neil couldn't hold a candle to them, the
way they was dressed up, reg'lar doods every one o' them, an' the
style! If I'd been a young thing like one o' you girls now, I'd a lost
my heart a dozen times over. But if you'd a' seen the fellows that
took part in the concert, you'd a' died, the way they were rigged up!
They all came a-flippin' an' a-floppin' out onto the platform, an'
besides their pants an' coats, every mother's son o' them had on some
kind of a long cloak, for all the world like Mrs. Duffy's black dolman.
An' they had the curiousest things on their heads, jist exactly like
the black shingles that was flyin' 'ro