'Not a chop?' she said to Cameron. 'Oh, but you really must. Think of the severe physical labour you are continually doing. Just a small one! You touched no meat yesterday, nor the day before.' She looked on the verge of tears.
'Don't trouble, I don't care for any,' Cameron said. 'I'll have some—some,'—his eyes wandered round the table in search of something nicer than the potatoes—'some bread and butter.'
But Lizzie's prentice hand at bread! And store butter three weeks old! He reached himself Pendennis, and, helped by the pleasant gossiping of the mayor, managed to swallow a few mouthfuls.
All through the meal Miss Browne lamented over his appetite, but he heeded her voice just as much as he did the flies that buzzed round his tea-cup—both were integral parts of life, and to be endured.
'May I put you a chop aside, and warm it up for your tea?' she persisted anxiously.
He put his finger on the place in the book and looked up for one second.
'I am going to try vegetarianism,' he said. 'I have come to the conclusion that meat does not agree with me.'
And it did not. Every second Saturday now with his own hands he was obliged to kill a sheep for the sake of his family; he found a man would charge ten shillings each time to come the distance. The physical nausea for the task was such that from the time he first took the knife into his shuddering hand to the day they buried him, no morsel of animal food passed his lips.
The children were still—a month after they had come—full of magnificent enthusiasms. Hermie and Miss Browne were going to restore the fallen fortunes of the family by raising poultry. Hermie worked intoxicating sums on paper, and even Miss Browne, distrustful of the child's arithmetic, on checking the figures could find so little wrong that she began to be a-tremble with delight at the prospect herself. Bart himself, the only one of the family touched with caution, found they had left sufficient margin for losses, and assented that a fortune might assuredly be made.
For who could dispute the fact that the grocer charged from one to two shillings a dozen for his eggs, according to season? Let them reckon on the basis of one shilling. And Small, the butcher, charged three and sixpence to four and sixpence a pair for table fowls. Let them be very safe, and say two and sixpence.