Mrs. Bradford, "of running around with those boys, and really, my
dear, Priscilla says some of the FUNNIEST things when she gets a
little er--'boiled', as she calls it--you must come over some
evening, and bring the governor."

Mrs. Brewster, Priscilla's aunt, is the ancestor of all New
England aunts. She may be seen today walking down Tremont Street,
Boston, in her Educator shoes on her way to S. S. Pierce's which
she pronounces to rhyme with HEARSE. The twentieth century Mrs.
Brewster wears a highnecked black silk waist with a chatelaine
watch pinned over her left breast and a spot of Gordon's codfish
(no bones) over her right. When a little girl she was taken to
see Longfellow, Lowell, and Ralph Waldo Emerson; she speaks
familiarly of the James boys, but this has no reference to the
well-known Missouri outlaws. She was brought up on blueberry
cake, Postum and "The Atlantic Monthly"; she loves the Boston
"Transcript", God, and her relatives in Newton Centre. Her idea
of a daring joke is the remark Susan Hale made to Edward Everett
Hale about sending underwear to the heathen. She once asked
Donald Ogden Stewart to dinner with her niece; she didn't think
his story about the lady mind reader who read the man's mind and
then slapped his face, was very funny; she never asked him again.

The action of this story all takes place in MRS. BREWSTER'S
Plymouth home on two successive June evenings. As the figurative
curtain rises MRS. BREWSTER is sitting at a desk reading the
latest instalment of Foxe's "Book of Martyrs".

The sound of a clanking sword is heard outside. MRS. BREWSTER
looks up, smiles to herself, and goes on reading. A knock--a