Jessie came in directly, looking very pale and sweet in her sadness: her eyes were sunken with wakefulness, but she had a smile for both, and an affectionate kiss before taking her place at the table; where, after kicking himself in his misery, Dick set-to, pretending not to notice his child’s depression, though he felt a bitter pang at his heart as he was guilty of every bit of clowning in his efforts to bring a smile from the suffering girl’s eyes.
At times, though, he was very absent, and his tongue went on talking at random—of the last thing, perhaps, that he had seen—while his mind was far away. In fact, had his brother been present, with witnesses, he would have had strong grounds for saying that Dick’s brain was softening at the very least.
He began with grace, standing up, and very reverently said the customary formula, ending “truly thankful. Amen. Pure pickles, sauces, and jams,” he continued, for his eye had lighted upon the label of a bottle in the silver stand.
He started the next moment, and looked round, with one hand in his breast, to see if the string of his front was all right, for he occasionally put on one of those delusive articles of linen attire when he dressed for dinner, and always went in torture for the rest of the evening, on account of the treacherous nature of the garment—one which invariably seeks to betray the weakness of a man’s linen-closet by bursting off strings or creeping insidiously round under his arm. In fact, one of Richard Shingle’s, on a certain evening, deposited the bottom of the well-starched plaits in his soup, by making a dive out from within his vest as he leaned forward.
“Glass of wine, Jessie?” said Dick, as the dinner went on; and to oblige him the poor girl took a little, just as Mrs Shingle exclaimed—
“Bless me! I have no handkerchief. Did you take my handkerchief, Jessie?”
“Lor’! mother, don’t talk of your handkerchief as if it was a pill. You do roll ’em up pretty tight, but not quite so bad as that.”
The boy, who was waiting at table, exploded in a burst of laughter, which he tried to hide by rattling the glasses on the sideboard, and then turning uncomfortable as his master gave him a severe frown.
“What’s the pudden, my dear?” said Dick at last.
“It’s a new kind,” said Mrs Shingle. “You’ll have some? I told the cook how to make it.”