"Martha," I said, "you will persist that the butter is good, because you ordered it. If you will only own that, I won't say another word."
"I can't say it," she returned. "Mrs. Jones' butter is invariably good. I never heard it found fault with before. The trouble is you are so hard to please."
"No, I am not. And you can't convince me that if the buttermilk is not perfectly worked out, the butter could be fit to eat."
This speech I felt to be a masterpiece. It was time to let her know how learned I was on the subject of butter, though I wasn't brought up to make it or see it made.
But here Ernest put in a little oil.
"I think you are both right," he said. "Mrs. Jones makes good butter, but just this once she failed. I dare say it won't happen again, and mean while this can be used for making seed-cakes, and we can get a new supply."
This was his masterpiece. A whole firkin of butter made up into seed-cakes!
Martha turned to encounter him on that head, and I slipped off to my room to look, with a miserable sense of disappointment, at my folly and weakness in making so much ado about nothing. I find it hard to believe that it can do me good to have people live with me who like rancid butter, and who disagree with me in everything else.