Keeler, impressively.

"Wall, there's a darned sight harder one on the road to West Wallen!"
burst out the old sea-captain desperately; "say nothin' about the
devilish stones!"

"Thar' now," said Grandma, with calm though awful reproof; "I think
we've gone fur enough for one day; we've broke the Sabbath, and took the
name of the Lord in vain, and that ought to be enough for perfessors."

Grandpa replied at length in a greatly subdued tone: "Wall, if you and
the teacher want to go over to Sunday-school to-day, I suppose we can go
if we get ready," a long submissive sigh--"I suppose we can."

"They have preachin' service in the mornin', I suppose," said Grandma.
"But we don't generally git along to that. It makes such an early start.
We generally try to get around, when we go, in time for Sunday-school.
They have singin' and all. It's just about as interestin', I think, as
preachin'. The old man r'aly likes it," she observed aside to me; "when
he once gets started, but he kind o' dreads the gittin' started."

When I beheld the ordeal through which Grandpa Keeler was called to
pass, at the hands of his faithful consort, before he was considered in
a fit condition of mind and body to embark for the sanctuary, I marveled
not at the old man's reluctance, nor that he had indeed seen clouds and
tempest fringing the horizon.

Immediately after breakfast, he set out for the barn, ostensibly to "see
to the chores;" really, I believe, to obtain a few moments' respite,
before worse evil should come upon him.