One unseasonably warm winter night (the temperature had risen to only eight degrees below zero) the whole group was sitting around the red hot stove. Knives were doing their assigned jobs of turning out the wooden pegs and the store was as quiet as an outhouse at three o’clock on a rainy morning. Clarence decided he needed a little noise to break up the stillness so he asked Mr. Cross, “How’s Edna?” (she was Mrs. Cross and she was having the miseries and feeling a little off her feed).

   “Oh! she’s better than nothing,” Mr. Cross said as he laid his knife and piece of lath aside, bowed his head, and in tearful tones began to tell his story. 

   “I’m so worried about Edna I can hardy sleep any more.” 

  “How come?” Clarence asked. 
 

“We were sitting in the living room two nights ago,” Mr. Cross said, “and I was reading the Lubec Herald while Edna was rocking and knitting. I guess it was about ten o’clock and she asked me if I’d like something to eat.

“Yes, Honey, I would,” I told her because I was a little hungry. “I’d like a nice hot cup of coffee, a slice of that apple pie you made today, and if you have any of that good sharp cheese I’d like a slice of that too.”

    “I think there’s some left in the icebox (old fashion refrigerator) and I may have a little myself,” she said as she stood and headed for the kitchen. 
 

I yelled after her, “Edna, I think you had better get a pencil and write down what I want. As you’ve gotten older your memory has faded a little.” Edna seldom gets mad at me but my remark did bother her some.

“I don’t have to write things down to remember them. My mind is as good as it was twenty five years ago,” she said as she stomped out. She was out in the kitchen about forty five minutes and when she came back she had a tray with a plate of sunny-side-up eggs on it, two strips of bacon, a glass of cold milk and a small stack of flapjacks on another plate.

     “See, she boasted, I didn’t have to write it down I remembered everything you ordered.” 

   Tears came to my eyes I felt so sorry for the old girl. 

   “I told you to write it down, Edna,” I said to her being careful not to raise my voice and make her mad. “Can’t you see you’ve forgotten the toast?"