Re could hardly believe it; he just opened his eyes wide and stared.

When he came to a sense of his rudeness, Mona was back in the kitchen helping with the supper dishes, just as though nothing had happened--unless one observed the deep, apple-red of her cheeks--while her mother, who showed not the faintest symptoms of collapse, flourished a dish towel made of a bleached flour sack with the stamp showing a faint pink and blue XXXX across the center.
"I knew all the time they wouldn't do anything when it came right to the point," she declared.

"Bless their hearts, they thought they would--but they're too soft-hearted, even when they are mad.

If yuh go at 'em right yuh can talk 'em over easy.

It done me good to hear yuh talk right up to 'em, Bud." Mrs.Stevens had called hi Bud from the first time she laid eyes on him.