"We met, 'twas on a rope,
And I thought she had done me;
I felt, I could not feel,
For my fate was upon me.
"If it hadn't been for your possession of peas, you would have beaten me, Miss Montfort. As it was, here's to our next meeting under the ceiling!" She took a large bite of pie, and regarded Peggy benevolently.
"Of peas?" repeated Peggy, vaguely, feeling that this might be English, but was not sense.
"Precisely. Avoir du pois, literally, to possess a pea! The French language. But you should have seen Vexation!" this strange person added, turning to Bertha. "Did see her? Well, she was a pleasant sight. Noxious animal, Vexation! It is a joy to see her taken down occasionally."
"I notice you are good friends enough, where any mischief is afoot!" said Bertha, bluntly. She broke a corner off the pie, and added, "Goat, this is mince pie!"
"It is! it is!" said Miss Wolfe. "Ever discriminating, my own! And good? Say it is good, Fluffy!"
"Yes, it is uncommonly good!" said Bertha. "Where did you get it? You've no business to have it, of course!"
"I got it out of a bandbox, sweet one!" replied Grace Wolfe. "It lives—they live, I should say, for there are three of them, thanks be to praise!—in a bandbox. A round one, or, to be more exact, oval in form, covered with wall-paper, whereon purple scrolls dispute the mastery with pink lozenges. It's the sweetest thing in bandboxes that I've seen since time was."
"Yes, but the pies!"
"The pies! as I was saying, three of them; ample, full moons of rapture!