"I can't stand this," said Eph to himself; "I don't wonder that they always used to put Joshua off at the first port, when he tried to go coasting. They said he talked them crazy with nothing.
"I'll go into the house and see Aunt Lyddy," he said, aloud. "I'm loafing this afternoon."
"All right! all right!" said Joshua. "Lyddy'll be glad to see ye--that is, as glad as she would be to see anybody," he added, reaching out for a pole. "Now, I don' s'pose that sounds very well; but still, you know how she is--she allus likes to hev folks to talk, and then she's allus sayin' talkin' wears on her; but I ought not to say that to you, because she allus likes to see you--that is, as much as she likes to see anybody--in fact, I think, on the whole--"
"Well, I'll take my chances," said Eph, laughing, and he opened the gate and went in.
Joshua's wife, whom everybody called Aunt Lyddy, was oscillating in a rocking-chair in the kitchen, and knitting. It was currently reported that Joshua's habit of endlessly retracting and qualifying every idea and modification of an idea which he advanced, so as to commit himself to nothing, was the effect of Aunt Lyddy's careful revision.
"I s'pose she thought 'twas fun to be talked deef when they was courtin'," Captain Seth had once sagely remarked. "Prob'ly it sounded then like a putty piece on a seraphine; but I allers cal'lated she'd git her fill of it, sooner or later. You most gin'lly git your fill o' one tune."
"How are you this afternoon, Aunt Lyddy?" asked Eph, walking in without knocking, and sitting down near her.
"So as to be able to keep about," she replied. "It is a great mercy I ain't afflicted with falling out of my chair, like Hepsy Jones, ain't it?"
"I've brought you some oysters," he said. "I set the basket down on the door-step. I just took them out of the water myself from the bed I planted to the west of the water-fence."
"I always heard you was a great fisherman," said Aunt Lyddy, "but I had no idea you would ever come here and boast of being able to catch oysters. Poor things! How could they have got away? But why don't you bring them in? They won't be afraid of me, will they?"
He stepped to the door and brought in a peck basket full of large, black, twisted shells, and with a heavy clasp-knife proceeded to open one, and took out a great oyster, which he held up on the point of the blade.