table, or else put the
tea on the side-board? They're like man and wife, they don't ought to be
separated, them two.'

"She looked at me, oh what a look of pity it was", as much as to
say, 'Where have you been all your born days, not to know better nor
that?--but I guess you don't know better in the States--how could you
know any thing there?' But she only said it was the custom here, for she
was a very purlite old woman, was Aunty.

"Well sense is sense, let it grow where it will, and I guess we raise
about the best kind, which is common sense, and I warn't to be put down
with short metre, arter that fashion. So I tried the old man; sais I,
'Uncle,' sais I, 'if you will divorce the eatables from the drinkables
that way, why not let the servants come and tend. It's monstrous
onconvenient and ridikilous to be a jumpin' up for everlastinly that
way; you can't sit still one blessed minit.'

"'We think it pleasant,' said he, 'sometimes to dispense with their
attendance.'

"'Exactly,' sais I, 'then dispense with sarvants at dinner, for when
the wine is in, the wit is out.' (I said that to compliment him, for the
critter had no wit in at no time,) 'and they hear all the talk. But at
breakfast every one is only half awake, (especially when you rise so
airly as you do in this country,' sais I, but the old critter couldn't
see a joke, even if he felt it, and he didn't know I was a funnin'.)
'Folks are considerably sharp set at breakfast,' sais I, 'and not very
talkat_ive_. That's the right time to have sarvants to tend on you.'

"'What an idea!' said he, and he puckered up his pictur, and the way he
stared was a caution to an owl.

"Well, we sot and sot till I was tired, so thinks I, 'what's next?' for
it's rainin' agin as hard as ever.' So I took a turn in the study
to sarch for a book, but there was nothin' there, but a Guide to the
Sessions, Burn's Justice, and a book of London club rules, and two or
three novels. He said he got books from the sarkilatin' library.

"'Lunch is ready.'

"'What, eatin' agin? My goody!' thinks I, 'if you are so fond of it, why
the plague don't you begin airly? If you'd a had it at five o'clock this
morning, I'd a done justice to it; now I couldn't touch it if I was to
die.'

"There it was, though. Help yourself, and no thanks, for there is no
sarvants agin. The rule here is, no talk no sarvants--and when it's all
talk, it's all sarvants.

"Thinks I to myself, 'now, what shall I do t