His elder brother grew playful, and caught him by the baggy reverse of his more essential garment.
"Hush!" said Mrs.Sprowle,--"there 's the bell!" Everybody took position at once, and began to look very smiling and altogether at ease .-- False alarm.

Only a parcel of spoons,--"loaned," as the inland folks say when they mean lent, by a neighbor.
"Better late than never!" said the Colonel, "let me heft them spoons." Mrs.Sprowle came down into her chair again as if all her bones had been bewitched out of her.
"I'm pretty nigh beat out a'ready," said she, "before any of the folks has come." They sat silent awhile, waiting for the first arrival.

How nervous they got! and how their senses were sharpened! "Hark!" said Miss Matilda,--"what 's that rumblin' ?" It was a cart going over a bridge more than a mile off, which at any other time they would not have heard.

After this there was a lull, and poor Mrs.Sprowle's head nodded once or twice.

Presently a crackling and grinding of gravel;--how much that means, when we are waiting for those whom we long or dread to see! Then a change in the tone of the gravel-crackling.
"Yes, they have turned in at our gate.