` Oh , certainly , ' said grandfather , and took him into the parlour . Cousin Ebenezer shut the door , looked all around him and then said imploringly , ` MORE PRIVATE STILL . ' So grandfather took him into the spare room and shut that door . He was getting frightened . He thought something terrible must have happened Cousin Ebenezer . Cousin Ebenezer came right up to grandfather , took hold of the lapel of his coat , and said in a whisper , ` Uncle Abraham , CAN -- YOU -- LEND -- ME -- AN -- AXE ? ' '' `` He need n't have made such a mystery about it , '' said Cecily , who had missed the point entirely , and could n't see why the rest of us were laughing . But Cecily was such a darling that we did not mind her lack of a sense of humour . `` It 's kind of mean to tell stories like that about people who are dead , '' said Felicity . `` Sometimes it 's safer than when they 're alive though , sweetheart , '' commented Dan . We had our expected good dinner at Cousin Mattie 's -- may it be counted unto her for righteousness . She and her sisters-in-law , Miss Louisa Jane and Miss Caroline , were very kind to us . We had quite a nice time , although I understood why Dan objected to them when they patted us all on the head and told us whom we resembled and gave us peppermint lozenges . CHAPTER VIII . WE VISIT PEG BOWEN We left Cousin Mattie 's early , for it still looked like a storm , though no more so than it had in the morning . We intended to go home by a different path -- one leading through cleared land overgrown with scrub maple , which had the advantage of being farther away from Peg Bowen 's house . We hoped to be home before it began to storm , but we had hardly reached the hill above the village when a fine , driving snow began to fall . It would have been wiser to have turned back even then ; but we had already come a mile and we thought we would have ample time to reach home before it became really bad . We were sadly mistaken ; by the time we had gone another half-mile we were in the thick of a bewildering , blinding snowstorm . But it was by now just as far back to Cousin Mattie 's as it was to Uncle Alec 's , so we struggled on , growing more frightened at every step .
We could hardly face the stinging XXXXX , and we could not see ten feet ahead of us .
ME darling head lack lapel rest sisters-in-law snow something sweetheart