"A mild winter on the Cape." Grandpa Keeler often repeated the words; and
sitting by the fire at night, his eyes grew big and wild, and his tones
took on a terrible impressiveness as he told of _rough_ winters on the
Cape, when the snow lay drifted high across the fences in the lane, and
"every time she came in yender"--pointing in the direction of the
Bay--"she licked offa slice or two o' bank, and the old Ark whirled and
shuk--O Lordy, teacher!--as ef she'd slipped her moorin's and gone off on
a high sea, and ef you'd a heered the wind a screechin' inter them
winders, you'd a thought the"----
"Bijonah Keeler!" Grandma Keeler spoke. She said no more. It was enough.
"You'd a thought something had got loose, sure," concluded Grandpa, with
a keen glance aside to me that revealed, as with tenfold significance,
the obstructed force of his narrative.
In the daytime, Grandpa was now much out of doors. He had most frequent
and loving recourse to an interesting looking pile of rubbish at the
south end of the barn. There he sat, and napped and nodded, and employed
the brief interims of wakefulness in whittling bean poles, preparatory
for another year's supply of that dreaded and inexorable crop.
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