Uncle Roger said he looked as if he had been stealing sheep . He sat for a whole hour in the kitchen and hardly spoke a word , but just looked miserable . At last he got up and said in a desperate sort of way , ` Uncle Abraham , can I speak with you in private for a minute ? ' ` Oh , certainly , ' said grandfather , and took him into the parlour . Cousin Ebenezer shut the door , looked all around him and then said imploringly , ` MORE PRIVATE STILL . ' So grandfather took him into the spare room and shut that door . He was getting frightened . He thought something terrible must have happened Cousin Ebenezer . Cousin Ebenezer came right up to grandfather , took hold of the lapel of his coat , and said in a whisper , ` Uncle Abraham , CAN -- YOU -- LEND -- ME -- AN -- AXE ? ' '' `` He need n't have made such a mystery about it , '' said Cecily , who had missed the point entirely , and could n't see why the rest of us were laughing . But Cecily was such a darling that we did not mind her lack of a sense of humour . `` It 's kind of mean to tell stories like that about people who are dead , '' said Felicity . `` Sometimes it 's safer than when they 're alive though , sweetheart , '' commented Dan . We had our expected good dinner at Cousin Mattie 's -- may it be counted unto her for righteousness . She and her sisters-in-law , Miss Louisa Jane and Miss Caroline , were very kind to us . We had quite a nice time , although I understood why Dan objected to them when they patted us all on the head and told us whom we resembled and gave us peppermint lozenges . CHAPTER VIII . WE VISIT PEG BOWEN We left Cousin Mattie 's early , for it still looked like a storm , though no more so than it had in the morning . We intended to go home by a different path -- one leading through cleared land overgrown with scrub maple , which had the advantage of being farther away from Peg Bowen 's house . We hoped to be home before it began to storm , but we had hardly reached the hill above the village when a fine , driving snow began to fall .
It would have been wiser XXXXX have turned back even then ; but we had already come a mile and we thought we would have ample time to reach home before it became really bad .
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