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"Get the backgammon board," she said then, and she would usually add: "My father brought it home from Lisbon the third time he sailed back from Canton, and I wish he were here to play on it now, so I wouldn't have to play with Sue."

I have often wondered how Cousin Sue stood it with the air in that small parlor growing closer all the while, but unflinchingly she rattled the dice and shifted the counters evening after evening. Toward the end she played Aunt Sarah's board and her own too, very quickly for an hour. At half-past eleven Aunt Sarah drank a half-pint of milk from her great-grandfather's silver ale can, and afterwards went to the side entry and took down her presentation copy of one of the works of John Brill, the Wickford Sage.

"It is time for a treat now," she used to say. "We can't go to bed without hearing from dear John." She always called him "dear John," and when she closed the book she always said:—

"I don't know what ever induced him to marry that woman. I told him he was a fool."