"I'm reel glad you don't hold it necessary fer pa," she said with a sigh
of relief; "he'd take it so hard, eatin' gettin' him all het up anyhow.
Now between ourselves, Mrs. Evan, don't you think writ out manners is
terrible confusin' and contradictin'? I wouldn't hev Lurella hear me say
so, she's so set on keepin' up with things, but she's over to town this
afternoon.
"I've been readin' for myself some, and observin' too. The Bluff folks
that plays grass hockey, all over what was Bijah Woods's farm, men and
girls both, has their sleeves pushed up as if they were going at a day's
wash, and their collars open and hanging to the hind button, which to my
mind looks shiftlesser than doin' without. I do hear also that those same
girls when they git in to dinner takes off their waists altogether and
sets down to eat all stripped off to a scrap of an underbody. That's
true, for pa saw it when he was takin' cream over to Ponsonby's; the
windows was open on the piazza, and he couldn't refrain from peekin',
though I hope you'll not repeat. Of course they may feel dreadful sweaty
after chasin' round in the sun all day, though I wouldn't hold such
sudden coolin' wholesome; but why if women so doin' should they insist on
men folks wearin' collars, say I?"
I told the dear soul that I had never quite been able to understand the
_reason why_ of many of these things, and that my ways were also quite
different from those of the Bluff people; for though father and Evan had
been brought up to wear collars, I had never yet stripped to my underbody
at dinner time.
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