When she sat down at the pretty round table, arranged for two persons, Miss Panney was surprised at the scanty supply of eatables. There was the tea-tray, bread and butter, and some radishes. Her soul rose in anger.
"Slops and fruit," she said to herself. "She isn't worthy to have any sort of a husband, much less such a one as she has."
There was a vase of flowers in the centre of the table; but although Miss
Panney liked flowers, at meal-times she preferred good honest food.
"Shall I give you a cup of tea?" asked her hostess.
The old lady did not care for tea, but as she considered that she could not eat strawberries on an empty stomach, she took some, and was just about to cast a critical eye on the bread, when a maid entered, bearing a dish containing two little square pieces of fish, covered with a greenish white sauce, and decorated with bits of water-cress.
As soon as Miss Panney's eyes fell upon this dish, she understood the situation—Mrs. Tolbridge had actually fallen back upon Kipper. Kipper was a caterer in Thorbury, and a good one. He was patronized by the citizens on extraordinary festive occasions, but depended for his custom principally upon certain families who came to the village for a few months in the summer, and who did not care to trouble themselves with much domestic machinery.
"Kipper, indeed," thought the old lady; "that is the last peg. A caterer's tid-bit for a hard-working man. If she would have her fish cooked properly in her own house, she could give him six times as much for half the money. And positively," she continued, in inward speech, as the maid presented the bread and butter, "Kipper's biscuit! I suppose she is going to let him provide her with everything, just as he does for those rich people on Maple Avenue."
The fish was very good, and Miss Panney ate every morsel of it, but made no remark concerning it. Instead of speaking of food, she talked of the doings of the Methodist congregation in Thorbury, who were planning to build a new church, far more expensive than she believed they could afford. She was engaged in berating Mr. Hampton, the minister, who, she declared, was actually encouraging his flock in their proposed extravagance, when the maid gave her a clean plate, and handed her a dish of sweetbread, tastefully garnished with clover blossoms and leaves. Miss Panney stopped talking, gazed at the dish for a minute, and then helped herself to a goodly portion of its contents.
"Feathers," she said to herself; "no more than froth and feathers to a man who has been working hard half a day, and as to the extravagance of such flimsy victuals—" She could keep quiet no longer, she was obliged to speak out, and she burst into a tirade against people who called themselves pious, and yet, wilfully shutting their eyes, were about to plunge into wicked wastefulness. She ate as she talked, however, and she had brought up John Wesley, and was about to give her notion of what he would have had to say about a fancy church for a Thorbury congregation, when the plates were again changed, and a dainty dish of sirloin steak, with mushrooms, and thin slices of delicately browned potatoes, was put before her.
"Well!" inwardly ejaculated the old lady, "something substantial at last.
But what money this meal must have cost!"