"It isn't well to crow before you are out of the woods." "Very true, Rachel.

It isn't your failing to look too much at the sunny side of the picture." "I'm ready to look at it when I can see it anywhere," answered his sister, in the same enlivening way.
"Don't you see it in the unexpected good fortune which came with this child ?" asked Timothy.
"I've no doubt you think it very fortunate now," said Rachel, gloomily; "but a young child's a great deal of trouble." "Do you speak from experience, Aunt Rachel ?" asked Jack.
"Yes," said his aunt, slowly.

"If all babies were as cross and ill-behaved as you were when you were an infant, five hundred dollars wouldn't begin to pay for the trouble of having them around." Mr.Harding and his wife laughed at the manner in which the tables had been turned upon Jack, but the latter had his wits about him sufficiently to answer: "I've always heard, Aunt Rachel, that the crosser a child is, the pleasanter he will grow up.

What a very pleasant baby you must have been!" "Jack!" said his mother, reprovingly; but his father, who looked upon it as a good joke, remarked, good-humoredly: "He's got you there, Rachel." But Rachel took it as a serious matter, and observed that, when she was young, children were not allowed to speak so to their elders.
"But I don't know as I can blame 'em much," she continued, wiping her eyes with the corner of her apron, "when their own parents encourage 'em in it." Timothy was warned, by experience of Rachel's temper, that silence was his most prudent course.

Anything that he might say would only be likely to make matters worse than before.
Aunt Rachel sank into a fit of deep despondency, and did not say another word till dinner time.