"Cousin Mattie's a great cook and there's nothing stingy about her." "You are always thinking of your stomach," said Felicity pleasantly.
"Well, you know I couldn't get along very well without it, darling," responded Dan who, since New Year's, had adopted a new method of dealing with Felicity--whether by way of keeping his resolution or because he had discovered that it annoyed Felicity far more than angry retorts, deponent sayeth not.

He invariably met her criticisms with a good-natured grin and a flippant remark with some tender epithet tagged on to it.

Poor Felicity used to get hopelessly furious over it.
Uncle Alec was dubious about our going that day.

He looked abroad on the general dourness of gray earth and gray air and gray sky, and said a storm was brewing.

But Cousin Mattie had been sent word that we were coming, and she did not like to be disappointed, so he let us go, warning us to stay with Cousin Mattie all night if the storm came on while we were there.
We enjoyed our walk--even Felix enjoyed it, although he had been appointed to write up the visit for Our Magazine and was rather weighed down by the responsibility of it.