Lawrence Newt was certainly more than forty.

But the Newt Family Bible was under a lock of which the key lay in Mrs.Boniface Newt's bureau, who, in a question of age, preferred tradition, which she could judiciously guide, to Scripture.

When Boniface Newt led Nancy Magot to the altar, he recorded, in a large business hand, both the date of his marriage and his wife's birth.

She protested, it was vulgar.

And when the bridegroom inquired whether the vulgarity were in the fact of being born or in recording it, she said: "Mr.Newt, I am ashamed of you," and locked up the evidence.
There was a vague impression in the Newt family--Boniface had already mentioned it to his son Abel--that there was something that Uncle Lawrence never talked about--many things indeed, of course, but still something in particular.