Page:Stories told to a child.djvu/36

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THE GRANDMOTHER'S SHOE.

upset our ideas of right and wrong, and frightened us out of propriety, that we were nearly as rude as themselves through false shame at appearing otherwise.

We heard the father laughed at in his absence, and ridiculed for his peculiarity about the fruit, and we had nothing to say; we saw sister seeking for us in the shrubbery, and eluded her, and had lost courage against their orders to come out of our hiding-place and show ourselves. Yet these cousins kept us in high spirits, or rather in a state of considerable excitement; we spent the whole day with them in games of play, and went to bed at night thoroughly tired, and not at all inclined to talk together as usual.

At six o'clock the next morning we got up and went. out into the garden; the excitement of the past day was still upon us; we were not at all like the children who had walked there previous to this visit.

It was a very sultry morning, the air was still, the dew was dried already from the grass. It wanted an hour yet to breakfast time, and as Lucy and I sauntered leisurely through the wilderness, we discussed her cousins, blaming them very freely in their absence, though we had wanted courage to do it at the proper time.

We passed into the walled garden, and there the heat, for the tune of day, was quite remarkable; we got under the shade of the wall, and took off our bonnets to use by way of fans. Apples, pears, plums, lay thickly under the trees; the neighborhood of the frames was fragrant with the scent of the melons, which seemed as if it might have been collecting there all night, for there was not the least waft of air to carry it

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