Keziah suggested that it must be mighty funny to make him laugh in the middle of sermon writing.
"I've heard sermons that were funny," she said, "though they wasn't intended to be; but what I've heard of yours ain't that kind.

I wish you'd let me in on the joke.

I haven't been feelin' like laughin' for the last fortni't." She had been rather grave and preoccupied, for her, of late.

Bustling and busy she always was, never sitting down to "rest," as she called it, without a lap full of sewing.

The minister's clothes were mended and his socks darned as they had not been since his mother's day.