It is hard to figure percentages when the most intimate details of Bayport's family life are being recited and gloated over on the other side of a thin partition.

And when Matilda undertook to defend the Come-Outer faith against the assaults of the majority, the verbal riot was, as Mr.Tidditt described it, "like feedin' time in a parrot shop." So Miss Phoebe came to the boarding house for supper and then returned to the schoolroom, where, with a lighted bracket lamp beside her on the desk, she labored until nine o'clock.

Then she put on her coat and hat, extinguished the light, locked the door, and started on her lonely walk home.
"The main road" in our village is dark after nine o clock.

There is a street light--a kerosene lamp--on a post in front of the Methodist meeting house, but the sexton forgets it, generally speaking, or, at any rate, neglects to fill it except at rare intervals.

Simmons's front windows are ablaze, of course, and so are the dingy panes of Simpson's barber shop.