Look at her, jest skin and bones." Councill chuckled in his vast way.

"That's so, mother; measured in that way, she leads over you.

You git fat on it." She smiled a little, her indignation oozing away.

She never "_could_ stay mad," her children were accustomed to tell her.

Burns refused to talk any more about the matter, and the visitors gave it up, and got out their team and started for home, Mrs.Councill firing this parting shot: "The best thing you can do to-day is t' let her alone.