eat smaller than any other kind. I should take at least twelve pounds of sugar off the allowance for the year and four gallon less of molasses than you was calculatin' on."
He sat down and Sister Cantwell rose. She was a fat woman, famous in the southern Ohio country for the lavish table she set.
"Short sweetening," she said in a thin high voice, "is dreadful high. I said to Hiram yesterday that the last sugar loaf I bought was worth its weight in silver. I should say, cut down on short sweetening. Long sweetening is all right except for holidays."
Jason whispered to his mother, "What's long sweetening, mother?"
"They must mean molasses," she whispered in return, with a glance at Jason's father, who sat at the far end of the pew reading his Bible as he always did at this annual ordeal.
Jason looked from his mother's quiet, sensitive face, like yet so unlike his own, to the bare pulpit of the little country
