As to the appetite, Ebenezer was generally well provided. Indeed, latterly his appetite had exceeded his means of gratifying it, and more than once he had longed to be back at his old home in the Vermont farm-house, where the table was always generously, if not elegantly, furnished. If Ebenezer had a special weakness it was for doughnuts, which he called nut-cakes.
"If I only had a few of marm's nut-cakes," he had said the night before to his new-found friends, "I'd be a happy man."
"What are nut-cakes?" asked the Scotchman, puzzled.
"Don't you know what nut-cakes are?" inquired Ebenezer, astonished at Ferguson's ignorance.
"I never heard of them before," said Ferguson.
"Well, I declare! I thought everybody knew what nut-cakes are," ejaculated the Yankee. "Don't you ever make 'em in Scotland?"
"Not that I ever heard."
"Then you don't know what is good. You know what they are, Tom?"
"Oh, yes," said Tom, smiling. "We often have them at home. Perhaps Mr. Ferguson would understand better if he heard them called doughnuts or crullers."
Thus defined Mr. Ferguson acknowledged that he had heard of them, and he thought he had once tasted one. Scotland, however, fell considerably in the estimation of Mr. Onthank, when he learned that his favorite article of food was almost unknown in that distant country.