CHAPTER XX.OVER THEIR TEA.
Kate Gorman had received a hint from her mistress and drawn the table out from against the wall, a trouble she seldom undertook merely for the household. She also spread a clean damask table-cloth over it, and gave her knives an extra scour before she put them on the table. Then she took particular pains with the ham, and left a fried egg upon the top of each slice, with the unbroken yolk gleaming like a ball of gold in the centre of the white, which was beautifully browned on the edges.
To these dainties she added a glass dish full of quince preserves, and some nice green pickles, that contrasted gorgeously with the gold of the egg and the red of the ham, when they got on the same plate together.
“Now this is something like,” said Mrs. Carter, pulling off her canary-colored gloves with a succession of little jerks, and seating herself at the table. “I haven’t set down to such a dinner in years. The very sight of it is enough to warm one’s heart.”
“Oh,” answered Mrs. Smith, “if I had only known you were coming? but it is only a tea dinner. I feel quite ashamed, and turkeys hanging in rows down stairs, with cranberries by the bushel.”
“Oh, mercy on me! don’t think of it,—turkeys indeed! I can get them every day of my life; but a bit of ham like this, I shouldn’t dare to ask my cook for it. She’d sing out shoddy, and quit the kitchen in less than no time.”
“Then you really like it?”
“Really like it? I should think so,” answered Mrs. Carter, feeling like a truant school girl as she balanced a fragment of egg on the point of her knife, and gloried inthe vulgarity from the depths of her soul. “If you only knew, Smith, what a comfort it is to eat just as you please, and just what you please.”
“But don’t you?” questioned the hostess, holding her own loaded knife half way to her mouth, and opening her eyes wide.
“Dear no! Why, Mrs. Smith, I should just as soon think of jumping out of the window, as to ask for a plate of corned beef and cabbage in my own house!”
“Dear me, you don’t say so?”
“The truth is, you’re expected to eat things that you don’t know the name of, and turn against when you do. There is patty de for grow, now.”
“Patty what?” questioned Mrs. Smith.
“De for grow!” answered Mrs. Carter, with emphasis.
Mrs. Smith shook her head.
“Never heard the name before. One of your upper crust friends, I suppose,” she said, in a bewildered way.
“No, no, its only the livers of over-crammed geese; but if you were to ask for gooseliver, the waiters would just laugh in your face. They’ve done it, Mrs. Smith, done it to me and Carter, too!”
“Dear me,” said Mrs. Smith, in deep sympathy, “I wouldn’t have believed it.”
“Oh! my dear, I sometimes think that Carter and I enjoyed ourselves more when we first started life, then we ever shall again—but, dear me, is that some one coming?”
“Only Smith. Of course you won’t mind him?”
“Not at all. Just another slice of the ham, its perfectly delicious.”
It was Mr. Smith who had come up stairs and stopped in the kitchen to wash his hands, which he did twice when Kate Gorman told him of the guest inside. In fact, he stepped into a closet and put on a clean collar and a pair of cuffs, which Kate buttoned for him—first wiping her handson the dish towel and afterward on her own apron, in a sudden paroxysm of neatness.
“There,” said the handmaiden, “yer fit to stand afore the Queen; so just go in and take yer bit of dinner like a gentleman, as ye are intirely.”
Smith took courage from this encomium, and entered the next room fresh as cold water could make him, and shedding around a wholesome flavor of yellow soap.
Mrs. Carter sprang to her feet, and met her old neighbor half way. “Why, Smith,isthis you? Didn’t expect to see me?”
“Well, whether or know, I’m glad to see you. How’s Carter?”
Mrs. Carter winced a little when her husband’s name was thus mentioned shorn of its appendages; but she answered cheerfully, and, seating herself at the table with a flutter of lace and rustle of silks, commenced on her fresh relay of ham with renewed appetite.
“Now, Smith, this is what I call sociable,” she said, looking around for a napkin; but not finding one, she used her lace handkerchief instead. “Your wife and I have been a-talking over old times; now its your turn.”
Smith looked at the glittering silk of her dress, and heard the tinkle of her gold chains and bracelets with something like dismay. He was beginning to think the clean cuffs and collar insufficient, and wished from the depths of his heart that he had put on his best coat.
“Lovely weather, isn’t it?” said Mrs. Carter, feeling a little innocent triumph in her old friend’s confusion, but compassionating it all the time.
“I—I don’t know—that is, it seemed to me this morning that there was a slight indication of a storm,” answered Smith, bringing out his very best language, in lieu of the coat.
Mrs. Carter accepted the long word as a compliment toher improved condition, and gently plumed herself upon it. She would gladly have matched his elegance with corresponding erudition, but failed to catch the inspiration, and only said,
“Indeed! well, I rather thought so myself.”