very particular about her gloves, and hid her boots so that no
other should put them on, and then she forgot their hiding-place,
and had suspicions of the one who found them. A good way of
enraging her was to say that her last year's bonnet would do for
this year without alteration, or that it would defy the face of
clay to count the number of her shawls. In one of my books there
is a mother who is setting off with her son for the town to which
he had been called as minister, and she pauses on the threshold to
ask him anxiously if he thinks her bonnet 'sets' her. A reviewer
said she acted thus, not because she cared how she looked, but for
the sake of her son. This, I remember, amused my mother very much.

I have seen many weary on-dings of snow, but the one I seem to
recollect best occurred nearly twenty years before I was born. It
was at the time of my mother's marriage to one who proved a most
loving as he was always a well-loved husband, a man I am very proud
to be able to call my father. I know not for how many days the
snow had been falling, but a day came when the people lost heart
and would make no more gullies through it, and by next morning to
do so was impossible, they could not fling the snow high enough.
Its back was against every door when Sunday came, and none ventured
out save a valiant few, who buffeted their way into my mother's
home to discuss her predicament, for unless she was 'cried' in the
church that day she might not be married for another week, and how
could she be cried with the minister a field away and the church
buried to the waist? For hours they talked, and at last some men
started for the church, which was several hundred yards distant.
Three of them found a window, and forcing a passage through it,
cried the pair, and that is how it came about that my father and
mother were married on the first of March.