“A little butter and pepper and salt, sir!” cried cook reproachfully; “a little rhubar’ and magneshire, you mean, to keep the nasty pysonous thinks from hurting of you. Really I do wonder at you, sir, a-going about picking up such rubbish.”
“But they’re good food—good to eat.”
“Yes, sir; for toads and frogs. Don’t tell me, sir. Do you think I don’t know what’s good Christian food when I see it, and what isn’t?”
“I know you think they’re no good, but I want to try them as an experiment.”
“Life isn’t long enough, sir, to try sperrymens, and I’d sooner go and give warning at once than be the means of laying you on a bed of agony and pain.”
“Oh, well, never mind, cook, let me do them myself.”
“What?” cried the stout lady in such a tone of indignant surprise that the lad felt as if he had been guilty of a horrible breach of etiquette, and made his retreat, basket and all, toward the door.
But he had roused Martha, who, on the strength of many years’ service with the doctor and his lady in London, had swollen much in mind as well as grown stout in body, and she followed him to the kitchen-door where he paused without opening it, for fear of the dispute reaching the ears of aunt and uncle in the breakfast-room.
“Look here, Martha,” he said, “don’t be cross. Never mind. I’m sorry I asked you.”
“Cross? Cross, Master Vane? Is it likely I should make myself cross about a basketful of rubbishing toadstools that you’ve wasted your time in fetching out of the woods?”