"Has that old cat gone at last, my dear?"
A second and a more awful silence followed this ill-timed question. But Lonely looked up unperturbed.
"Ma went over an hour ago!" he called placidly up to the approaching minister, now halfway down the stairs.
Then the boy looked blandly and soberly into the Widow Tiffins's ferret-like eyes.
"You know Mr. Sampson always calls ma the old cat—'specially after she threw that hot water on Lionel Clarence!" he explained, with unruffled composure.
Lionel Clarence was on the point of heatedly challenging this strange statement, when his mother pressed another tea-biscuit on him, and bent a face of very vivid red over the lemonade pitcher, stirring viciously at the sugar in the bottom.
But the yawning chasm had been bridged, the unsuspecting Widow Tiffins had caught up the broken threads of her discourse, and the Preacher himself had at least somewhat recovered himself before he reached the parlor door.
From that time forward not the minutest
