 A Real New England Girl by Anna I. Parsons 1. The Shower 2. Oxford County 3. The Stranger and the Girl 4. The Youth and the Girl 5. Pansy and Richard Go Trading 6. The Marvelous Storyteller 7. The Dinner 8. The The Minister Comes for Tea 9. Pansy's Father 10. Pansy and Her Mother 11. Poland Springs 12. The Birthday Cake 13. Ned Patterson Comes for a Visit 14. The Blue Berrying Party 15. The Beginning of Wisdom 16. The Tempted and the Penitent 17. The Concert 18. Stanley's Ride 19. The Bench by the Wayside 20. The Banker and the Widow 21. The Bag of Nuts 22. How They Kept Thanksgiving at Little Farm 23. Hardly a Merry Christimas 24. A Call Down and a Caller 25. The Pride of Mrs. Bradford 26. A Happy New Year 27. Amusement and Winter Sport 28. Kim 29. Richard, the Lion Hearted 30. A Tour of the White Mountains 31. Talking Over the Trip with Henry Bright 32. Thoughts That Lie Too Deep for Words 33. Economics 34. His Toast 35. The Busy Haunts of Man 36. Christmas in New York 37. The Last Night of Their Visit 38. The Language Understood by All 39. Sugaring Off 40. Correspondence 41. Commencement 42. Conclusion Afterward     |
The Dinner "Serenely full, the epicure would say: Fate cannot harm me, I have dined today." -- Sidney Smith A few mornings after Mr. Swift's call, Richard stopped at the Winthrop house with a note inviting Stanley to dinner. "Mother and Ruth are going to spend the day at Uncle Rob's, and mother has given us permission to invite you to dinner. Be here at twelve o'clock," ran Pansy's note. The Winthrops had much company to entertain, but rather than disappoint Pansy and Richard, Stanley excused himself, and at the appointed hour arrived at Little Farm. Richard was helping Pansy bring the hot things in from the kitchen, so he sat down and talked for a few minutes with Mr. Alden. "Now dinner is ready," said Pansy, placing on the table a large platter of mackerel, fried to a turn, coated with drawn butter, and garnished with green sprigs from the garden. "Cluck, cluck, cluck, come and have some! as Biddy says to her chicks at feeding time." They all sat down to the neat looking table. "Uncle Will can't say grace, so Richard and I have to," said Pansy. Then turning to her brother she said, "First or last, Richard?" "Last," answered Richard. They bowed their heads, and Pansy said, "Dear Father, we thank thee for good food, good appetites and good company, and we ask thee to always give these things to us." A moment's pause and Richard added, "That our days may be long in the land the Lord our God giveth us. Amen." "Uncle Will drinks coffee and Richard and I drink milk, and you can have either, Stanley," said Pansy, placing the cups in their saucers. "I think I'll have milk today," said Stanley. Mr. Alden gave each a good portion of mackerel, potatoes, and peas, Richard laid a large slice of steaming hot brown bread on each plate, and the work of mastication began. "Richard and I can't decide which we like the best, short mackerel or chicken," said Pansy, looking at her plate with the eye of an epicure. "We always call it a feast instead of dinner whenever we have either." "A feast of fish on Friday for four of us," said Stanley, summing up in the alliterative form to Pansy's amusement. "Sounds like Beowulf," she said. "Sometimes I think after all you have a little Anglo-Saxon in you." "I hope I have a great deal," was the rejoinder. "Stanley, what is the difference between a feast, a banquet, and a dinner?" asked Richard. "I should say any banquet or dinner might be made a feast with the aid of a good chef. A banquet is held in a large hall and there are elaborate decorations, music, toasts, and other features which do not usually accompany a dinner." "Could you give us a toast?" asked Pansy. "Why, yes. Assuming it is after dinner, my toast is, that my host and hostess may live long and feast often on short mackerel." Pansy and Richard looked at each other with pleased expressions, and Pansy said: "You mean a toast is a sort of sweet composition made at the table and distributed after dinner?" "It is something like that," he said, amused at her definition. "Once when all the folks were away for the day and Richard and I had dinner together, we tried to hold a mock banquet, and Richard insisted a toast was a discussion on some subject such as, 'Who was the greater man, Washington or Lincoln?' and while he was arguing that Washington was, the dinner got cold and we had to take it back to the kitchen and cook it over again." The bountiful supply of fish had rapidly diminished and now there was but one mackerel left on the platter. "You have it, Stanley," said Pansy. "I wouldn't take another piece if it were studded with diamonds." "You have it Richard." "No, you have it Pansy." Pansy took Richard's plate and her own and passed them to her Uncle Will. "We can't decide who is to have it, so you will have to divide it," she said. When the last piece of mackerel had disappeared, Pansy cleared off the table with great care, and then, placing her hands on her uncle's shoulders said, "Now comes the surprise, and you ought to be glad you didn't go to Uncle Rob's for dinner, Uncle Will." "Couldn't go without my little girl anyway," replied her uncle. Pansy brought plates and spoons and a large pudding, deep with meringue, touched here and there with delicate brown, showing that the oven had done its work effectively. "This is what you call The Queen of Puddings," she said, holding a large silver spoon over it. "Watch when I dish it out, and see what beautiful red veins it gets." The pudding was indeed a symphony in color, for when taken from the dish, the juice of crushed strawberries ran over it, giving it the appearance of a delicate, golden sponge floating in choice wine. "Your father used to be a good fisherman," said Mr. Alden in his deliberate way to Stanley, as they were finishing the pudding. "We boys used to go over to Hall's Pond for pickerel on dull days in summer, and he would always catch the most. We used to say, give Stanton Winthrop a tub of water and he would find fish in it. Folks said the pond had no bottom, and we boys were always afraid of getting in there. One rainy day a lot of us were over there, and John Swift, in fooling around in the boat, fell overboard. Swift couldn't swim, and nobody was very anxious to go after him, but your father whipped off his coat and dived and soon came to surface holding him by his red hair." There was a slight elevating of the eyebrows in the little group of listeners as Mr. Alden finished his story. Very soon Pansy remarked, "Mr. Swift said Mr. Winthrop ran away." "I dunno about that," said Mr. Alden. "I was up in Massachusetts working, and somebody wrote me that Stanton Winthrop had gone away, but I never heard the particulars. There were a lot of us boys, and he used to come to our house very often. I always thought he liked sister Ruth. Soon after he went away, Ruth married Richard Bradford." They rose from the table, and Richard and Stanley engaged in a game of checkers, Mr. Alden took a newspaper and went out into the backyard for his after dinner rest, and Pansy cleared the table. Soon the noise from the kitchen indicated that she was doing the dishes. After a while she came in with a dish towel and plate in her hand. Seating herself on the edge of a chair, she remarked to Stanley, "Wouldn't it be very strange if your father liked our mother when they were young, he is such a splendid gentleman and we are such plain country folks!" She gazed out of the window in abstraction for a moment, and then returned to the kitchen. Stanley gazed after her, and even after she had disappeared from view, his eyes still lingered in the direction she had gone until Richard reminded him it was his turn to move. Click Here for Chapter 8 |