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Chapter Twenty-four

"FEELS almost like summer, don't it?" Mrs. Driggs asked acquaintances as she came out of church. Walking home, because Noble liked to have his Sundays as free as possible, she let her sealskin coat fly open, and Mr. Driggs' face turned as red as a beet, as she told him several times. Noble had a big fire in the furnace. "Isn't it always the way?" she said. "If it was a chilly day he'd have let it go out, but here it's almost like summer—just a sliver of the well done, and some gravy on my potato, Papa—he's got a fire hot enough to roast us." And she added what she had been saying for over thirty years: "That man's so stupid I honestly don't think I can put up with him much longer."

It was a relief, after the big Sunday dinner that took endurance even on a cold day, to take off her heavily boned silk dress with the high net collar, to let her corsets pop open, and, in petticoat and dressing sacque, collapse with knees wide apart into the rocking chair by the window for a little rest before she tackled the Sunday papers.

"Why don't you have a good lie-down, Papa? It'd do you good. You ought to have seen your face, coming home from church! Just imagine this warm a