"Gerald and I are so awfully hungry of a morning," said the son, apologising.
"Well;—it's a very good thing to be hungry;—that is if you can get plenty to eat. Salmon, is it? I don't think I'll have any myself. Kidneys! Not for me. I think I'll take a bit of fried bacon. I also am hungry, but not awfully hungry."
"You never seem to me to eat anything, sir."
"Eating is an occupation from which I think a man takes the more pleasure the less he considers it. A rural labourer who sits on the ditch-side with his bread and cheese and an onion has more enjoyment out of it than any Lucullus."
"But he likes a good deal of it."
"I do not think he ever over-eats himself,—which Lucullus does. I have envied a ploughman his power,—his dura ilia,—but never an epicure the appreciative skill of his palate. If Gerald does not make haste he will have to exercise neither the one nor the other upon that fish."
"I will leave a bit for him, sir,—and here he is. You are twenty minutes late, Gerald. My father says that bread and cheese and onions would be better for you than salmon and stewed kidneys."
"No, Silverbridge;—I said no such thing; but that if he were a hedger and ditcher the bread and cheese and onions would be as good."
"I should not mind trying them at all," said Gerald. "Only one never does have such things for breakfast. Last winter a lot of us skated to Ely, and we ate two or three loaves of bread and a whole cheese at a pot-house! And as for beer, we drank the public dry."
"It was because for the time you had been a hedger and ditcher."