One day, as I came homewards along the road, with my books under my arm,
she was sitting in her blue-checked frock and straw hat, on the steps
by the side of the gate. She looked as if she were in a very bad temper,
and I could see at once that I was in for something.

She did not answer my greeting; but when I attempted to slip through the
gate a little more quickly than she liked, she asked me in an irritated
tone if it were true, as they said, that I was so lazy that they could
make nothing of me at home.

Susanna had often teased me; but what wounded me this time was that I
saw that they had been making my father and me the subject of censorious
remarks at the parsonage, and that Susanna had been a party to it. Had I
known that she now sat there as my defeated advocate, I should certainly
have done otherwise than I did, for with an offended look I passed on
without bestowing a word upon her.

When I came home, I heard that the minister and my father had had a
disagreement in the Court of Reconciliation. The minister, who was a
commissioner of that court, had said that he thought my father went too
quickly forward in a certain case, and my father had given him a hasty
answer. It was on this occasion that judgment was passed upon us in the
parsonage.

This state of affairs between our elders caused some shyness between us
children, and I remember that at first I was even afraid to go by the
parsonage, for fear of meeting the minister on the road.

Susanna, however, made several attempts at advances; but at the first
glimpse of her blue-checked frock I always went a long way round,