“We had to say grace for ourselves, Mr Bagnall,” said Father. “Sit down, and let me help you to some of this turkey pie.”
“Thanks—if you please. What a lovely morning!” was Mr Bagnall’s answer. “The young ladies look like fresh rosebuds with the dew on them.”
“We have not you gentlemen to thank for it, if we do,” broke in Hatty. “Our slumbers were all the less profound for your kind assistance. Oh yes, you can look, Mr Bagnall! I mean you. I heard ‘Sally in our Alley’ about one o’clock this morning.”
“No, was I singing that, now?” said Mr Bagnall, laughing. “I did not know I got quite so far. But at a hunt-supper, you know, everything is excusable.”
“Would you give me a reference to the passage which says so, Mr Bagnall?” came from behind the tea-pot. “I should like to note it in my Bible.”
Mr Bagnall laughed again, but rather uncomfortably.
“My dear Mrs Kezia, you do not imagine the Bible has anything to do with a hunt-supper?”
“It is to be hoped I don’t, or I should be woefully disappointed,” she answered. “But I always thought, Mr Bagnall, that the Word of God and the ministers of God should have something to do with one another.”
“Kezia, keep your Puritan notions to yourself!” roared Father from the other end of the table; and he put some words before it which I would rather not write. “I can’t think,” he went on, looking round, “wherever Kezia can have picked up such mad whims as she has. For a sister of mine to say such a thing to a clergyman—I declare it makes my hair stand on end!”
“Your hair may lie down again, Brother. I’ve done,” said my Aunt Kezia, coolly. “As to where I got it, I should think you might know. It runs in the blood. And I suppose Deborah Hunter was your grandmother as well as mine.”