Joe rose from the table hungry, and in that uneasy state of body began his first day’s labor on Isom Chase’s farm. He hoped that dinner might repair the shortcomings of breakfast, and went to the table eagerly when that hour came.
For dinner there was hog-jowl and beans, bitter with salt, yellow with salt, but apparently greatly to the liking of Isom, whose natural food seemed to be the very essence of salt.
“Help yourself, eat plenty,” he invited Joe.
Jowls and beans were cheap; he could afford to be liberal with that meal. Generosity in regard to that five-year-old jowl cost him scarcely a pang.
“Thank you,” said Joe politely. “I’m doing very well.”
A place was laid for Mrs. Chase, as at breakfast, but she did not join them at the table. She was scalding milk crocks and pans, her face was red from the steam. As she bent over the sink the uprising vapor moved her hair upon her temples like a wind.
“Ain’t you goin’ to eat your dinner, Ollie?” inquired Isom with considerable lightness, perhaps inspired by the hope that she was not.
“I don’t feel hungry right now,” she answered, bending over her steaming pan of crocks.
Isom did not press her on the matter. He filled up his plate again with beans and jowl, whacking the grinning jawbone with his knife to free the clinging shreds of meat.
Accustomed as he had been all his life to salt fare, that meal was beyond anything in that particular of seasoning that Joe ever had tasted. The fiery demand of his stomach for liquid dilution of his saline repast made an early drain on his coffee; when he had swallowed the last bean that he was able to force down, his cup was empty. He cast his eyes about inquiringly for more. 30