“To be sure, dearie! to be sure!” acquiesced Mrs. Lankton with alacrity. “’T is a fine game, and anncient, as you may say.  Why, my grandmother taught me to play ‘The Highland Gates’ when I was no bigger than you, Vesta Philbrook.  Ah! many’s the time I played it with my sister Salome, and she died just about your age.”

“Well, Mrs. Lankton,” said Hildegarde, encouragingly.

“Well? oh, bless you! no, dearie!  She was terrible sick! that was why she died.  Oh, my, yes!  She had dyspepsy right along, suffered everything with it, yet ’twas croup that got her at last.  Ah! there’s never any child knows when croup ’ll get her; girl nor boy!”

Hildegarde began to feel as if she must scream, or stamp her foot, or do some other impossible thing.

“Mrs. Lankton,” she said, gravely, “I am sure Auntie has the kettle on, and you will be the better for your tea, so will you not tell us as quickly as you can, please, about the game?  The children are waiting, you see, to go on with their play.”

“Jest what I was going to say, dear,” cried Mrs. Lankton.  “Let ’em play, I says, while they can, I says; for its soon enough they get the play squenched out of ’em, if you’ll excuse the expression, Miss Henfeather.”

At this apostrophe, delivered with mournful intensity, Bell retreated hastily behind a post of the veranda, and even Susan Aurora Bulger giggled faintly, with her apron in her mouth.

Hildegarde was silent, and tried the effect of gazing severely at the widow, apparently with some success, for after a pause of head-shaking, Mrs. Lankton continued: 

“But as you was saying, dearie, about the game.  Ye—­es!  Well, my grandmother, she was an anncient woman; some said she was ninety-seven, and more called it ninety-eight, but she didn’t rightly know herself, bein’ she had lost the family Bible.  Burned up with the house it was, before she came from the Provinces, and some said it was because of starting a new fire in the cook-stove on Sunday; but I don’t want to set in judgment, not on my own flesh and blood, I do not, Miss Grahame.  And I remember as if it was this day of time, she settin’ in her chair in the porch to our house, smokin’ her pipe, if you’ll excuse me ladies, bein’ an anncient woman, and I have heard great ladies took their pipes in them times, but so it is.  And she says to me, ‘Drusilly,’ she says, ‘Why don’t you play with Salome?’ and I says, ’’Cause I ain’t got nothin’ to play.’  And she says, ‘Come here,’ she says, ‘and I’ll learn ye a game,’ she says.  So I called Salome, and we two stood there, and Gram’ther she taught us ’The Highland Gates to Die.’  Salome, she had been feedin’ the hens, and when she come back she left the gate open, and they all got out and went and strayed into the woods, and my father got so mad we thought we should lose him, for sure.  Purple he used to get when he was mad, same as a late cabbage, and an awful sight.  Yes, children, be thankful if you’re learned to keep your tempers.  So that’s all I know, Miss Grahame, my dear, and you’re welcome as air to it; and I do believe I see Mis’ Auntie lookin’ out the kitching winder this minute, so if you’ll excuse me, ladies, bein’ I feel a goneness inside, and if I should faint away, how your blessed mother would feel!”