“Only a basket full, aunty,” said Vane merrily.
“What!” cried the lady, holding the teapot in air.
“But she is going to cook them for dinner.”
“Really, my dear, I must protest,” said the lady. “Vane cannot know enough about such things to be trusted to bring them home and eat them. I declare I was in fear and trembling over that last dish.”
“You married a doctor, my dear,” said Vane’s uncle quietly; “and you saw me partake of the dish without fear. Someone must experimentalise, somebody had to eat the first potato, and the first bunch of grapes. Nature never labelled them wholesome food.”
“Then let somebody else try them first,” said the lady. “I do not feel disposed to be made ill to try whether this or that is good for food. I am not ambitious.”
“Then you must forgive us: we are,” said the doctor dipping into his basket. “Come, you will not refuse to experimentalise on a peach, my dear. There is one just fully ripe, and—dear me! There are two wood-lice in this one. Eaten their way right in and living there.”
He laid one lovely looking peach on a plate, and made another dip.
“That must have fallen quite early in the night,” said Vane, sharply, “slugs have been all over it.”
“So they have,” said the doctor, readjusting his spectacles. “Here is a splendid one. No: a blackbird has been digging his beak into that. And into this one too. Really, my dear, I’m afraid that my garden friends and foes have been tasting them all. No, here is one with nothing the matter, save the contusion consequent from its fall from the mother tree.”