Father said that the vision of shy young folks driving miserably along the country lanes on Sunday afternoons in the family carryall, with mamma seated in the middle of the back seat, rose so ludicrously before him that he was obliged to beat a retreat, promising to send a special remedy for the rheumatism by Timothy Saunders.

All winter I have noticed that great local interest has been taken in the fashion journals that treat of house decoration and etiquette, and on one occasion, when making a call at one of our most comfortable farms, I found the worthy Deacon’s wife poring over an ornamental volume, entitled “Hints to those about to enter Society.”

After she had welcomed me and asked me to “lay off” my things, she hesitated a moment, and then, opening the book where her fat finger was keeping the place, she laid it on my lap, saying in a whisper:  “Would you tell me if that is true, Mrs. Evan?  Lurella says you hobnob some with the Bluff folks, and I wanted to make sure before we break it to pa.”

The sentence to which she pointed read, “No gentleman will ever come to the table without a collar, or be seen on porch or street in his shirt sleeves.”  Here, indeed, was a difficulty and a difference.  How should I explain?

I compromised feebly and advised her not to worry the Deacon about what the Bluff people did or the book said, for it need not apply to the Cross Roads farmers.

“I’m reel glad you don’t hold it necessary fer pa,” she said with a sigh of relief; “he’d take it so hard, eatin’ gettin’ him all het up anyhow.  Now between ourselves, Mrs. Evan, don’t you think writ out manners is terrible confusin’ and contradictin’?  I wouldn’t hev Lurella hear me say so, she’s so set on keepin’ up with things, but she’s over to town this afternoon.

“I’ve been readin’ for myself some, and observin’ too.  The Bluff folks that plays grass hockey, all over what was Bijah Woods’s farm, men and girls both, has their sleeves pushed up as if they were going at a day’s wash, and their collars open and hanging to the hind button, which to my mind looks shiftlesser than doin’ without.  I do hear also that those same girls when they git in to dinner takes off their waists altogether and sets down to eat all stripped off to a scrap of an underbody.  That’s true, for pa saw it when he was takin’ cream over to Ponsonby’s; the windows was open on the piazza, and he couldn’t refrain from peekin’, though I hope you’ll not repeat.  Of course they may feel dreadful sweaty after chasin’ round in the sun all day, though I wouldn’t hold such sudden coolin’ wholesome; but why if women so doin’ should they insist on men folks wearin’ collars, say I?”

I told the dear soul that I had never quite been able to understand the reason why of many of these things, and that my ways were also quite different from those of the Bluff people; for though father and Evan had been brought up to wear collars, I had never yet stripped to my underbody at dinner time.