The laughing in church was the point upon which, as yet, we had obtained no satisfaction.  Jerusha and I, in an uncertain hope that we should find out something in due time, were discussing the music.  The particular point in debate was, why village choirs will astonish the people with pieces of music in which nobody can join them.  We did not settle it, nor has anybody ever solved the riddle that I know of.  We don’t even know whether it comes under the ontological or psychological departments.  (There, now!  Haven’t I brought in the famous words that our new schoolmaster astonished us with at the teachers’ meeting?  He need not think that Webster Unabridged is his particular field, in which nobody else may hunt.)

We were, as I said, discussing the music.  Mother was flitting round, giving the final dust-off and brush-about after our early tea.  Aunt Clara was sitting quietly at the window, pretending to read Baxter’s “Saint’s Rest.”  Jerusha and I tried to imitate the tune, and we did it, as well as we could, and I am sure we are not bad singers.  Mother slipped out of the room just as we came to

    “And vie with Gabriel, while he sings.”

She ran as if something had stung her, and she was making for the hartshorn or some fresh brook-mud.  Aunt Clara’s face laughed all over, and I said: 

“Come, now, Aunt Clara, you are really irreverent.  You began laughing in meeting, and you are keeping it up over that good book.”

“Downright wicked,” said Jerusha.

Now I am a Normal graduate, and Jerusha is not yet “finished.”  That will account for the greater elegance of my expressions.  Aunt Clara paid no heed to either of us, but laughed on.  The most provoking thing in the world is a laugh that you don’t understand.  Here was the whole Dorcas Society laughing through its presidentess, and Aunt Clara joining in the laugh in meeting, and aggravating the offence by stereotyping the smirk in her face.  In came mother again, evidently afraid to stay out, and not liking for some reason to stay in.  Again we tried the tune, and had just got to

    “And vie with Gabriel, while he sings.”

Up jumped mother again, stopping in the door, and holding up a warning finger to Aunt Clara.  That gesture spurred my curiosity to the utmost point.  As to my beloved parent’s running in and out, that I should not have heeded.  She is like Martha, careful of many things.  She is unlike Martha, for she wants no assistance; but when the rest of us are disposed to be quiet, she will keep flitting here and there, and is vexed if we follow.  If father is talking, and has just reached the point of his story, off she goes, as if the common topic were nothing to her.  Father says she is a perturbed spirit.  But then he is always saying queer things, which poor mother cannot understand.  Aunt Clara seems to know him a great deal better.  I wonder he had not taken to wife a woman like Aunt Clara.  He would have taken her, I suppose, if she were not his own sister.