"Mebbe your app'tite's got somethin' to do with it," said David, shoveling a knife-load of good things into his mouth. "Polly, this young man's ben livin' on crackers an' salt herrin' fer a week."
"My land!" cried Mrs. Bixbee with an expression of horror. "Is that reelly so? 'T ain't now, reelly?"
"Not quite so bad as that," John answered, smiling; "but Mrs. Elright has been ill for a couple of days and—well, I have been foraging around Purse's store a little."
"Wa'al, of all the mean shames!" exclaimed Aunt Polly indignantly. "David Harum, you'd ought to be ridic'lous t' allow such a thing."
David Harum, Act III
"Wa'al, I never!" said David, holding his knife and fork straight up in either fist as they rested on the table, and staring at his sister. "I believe if the meetin'-house roof was to blow off you'd lay it on to me somehow. I hain't ben runnin' the Eagle tavern fer quite a consid'able while. You got the wrong pig by the ear as usual. Jes' you pitch into him," pointing with his fork to John. "It's his funeral, if anybody's."
"Wa'al," said Aunt Polly, addressing John in a tone of injury, "I do think you might have let somebody know; I think you'd ortter 've known——"
"Yes, Mrs. Bixbee," he interrupted, "I did know how kind you are and would have been, and if matters had gone on so much longer I should have appealed to you, I should have indeed; but really," he added, smiling at her, "a dinner like this is worth fasting a week for."
"Wa'al," she said, mollified again, "you won't git no more herrin' 'nless you ask for 'em."