"I might have taken a look at the clock first."
"It is a terrible thing to have a mother who prevaricates. Have you been lying down ever since I left?"
"Thereabout."
"What does that mean exactly?"
"Off and on."
"Have you been to the garret?"
"What should I do in the garret?"
"But have you?"
"I might just have looked up the garret stair."
"You have been redding up the garret again!"
"Not what you could call a redd up."
"O, woman, woman, I believe you have not been in bed at all!"
"You see me in it."
"My opinion is that you jumped into bed when you heard me open the door."
"Havers."
"Did you?"
"No."
"Well, then, when you heard me at the gate?"
"It might have been when I heard you at the gate."
As daylight goes she follows it with her sewing to the window, and gets another needleful out of it, as one may run after a departed visitor for a last word; but now the gas is lit, and no longer is it shameful to sit down to literature. If the book be
