"The killing has never been brought home to me so closely before."
"It's Nature's law, you see. Everything feeds on something else. These fishes feed on smaller things. And how do you know that when you cut a cabbage or a potato——"
"How I wish I had the chance!"
"So do I, most heartily. But how do you know they don't feel it just as much, in their own dull way, as the pig did from which we get our pork?"
She shook her head and sighed. "We can't get away from it, I suppose," and tasted the fish and found it good, and ate quite heartily though with an appearance of protest.
"You see," he said. "Some fishes lay millions of eggs at a time. If they all grew up the sea would be choked with them, as the earth would be with animals if they weren't killed off. Besides, unless I am mistaken in my recollection of our old parson's reading, all these things were expressly provided for man's sustenance, so we are only doing our duty in eating them."
"All the same, I think I will let you do all the catching and killing."
"Of course. That is the man's proper part in the family economy. He is the bread-and-meat winner. And the wife's—the woman's, I mean—is to see to the cooking," and he occupied himself busily with fish-bones, and felt like biting his tongue off for its involuntary slip.
"If you had lived on pork and rabbits for months you would find this fish delicious," he said presently, to break the odd little silence that had fallen on them.
"It is very good. I wonder you never caught any before."