Mrs. Peterkin’s spirits, however, gradually recovered. The little boys were allowed to watch the cow at her feed. A series of strings were arranged by Agamemnon and Solomon John, by which the little boys could be pulled up, if they should again fall down into the enclosure. These were planned something like curtain-cords, and Solomon John frequently amused himself by pulling one of the little boys up or letting him down.
Some conversation did again fall upon the old difficulty of questions. Elizabeth Eliza declared that it was not always necessary to answer; that many who could did not answer questions,—the conductors of the railroads, for instance, who probably knew the names of all the stations on a road, but were seldom able to tell them.
“Yes,” said Agamemnon, “one might be a conductor without even knowing the names of the stations, because you can’t understand them when they do tell them!”
“I never know,” said Elizabeth Eliza, “whether it is ignorance in them, or unwillingness, that prevents them from telling you how soon one station is coming, or how long you are to stop, even if one asks ever so many times. It would be useful if they would tell.”
Mrs. Peterkin thought this was carried too far in the horse-cars in Boston. The conductors had always left you as far as possible from the place where you wanted to stop; but it seemed a little too much to have the aldermen take it up, and put a notice in the cars, ordering the conductors “to stop at the farthest crossing.”
Mrs. Peterkin was, indeed, recovering her spirits. She had been carrying on a brisk correspondence with Philadelphia, that she had imparted to no one, and at last she announced, as its result, that she was ready for a breakfast on educational principles.
A breakfast indeed, when it appeared! Mrs. Peterkin had mistaken the alphabetical suggestion, and had grasped the idea that the whole alphabet must be represented in one breakfast.
This, therefore, was the bill of fare: Apple-sauce, Bread, Butter, Coffee, Cream, Doughnuts, Eggs, Fish-balls, Griddles, Ham, Ice (on butter), Jam, Krout (sour), Lamb-chops, Morning Newspapers, Oatmeal, Pepper, Quince-marmalade, Rolls, Salt, Tea Urn, Veal-pie, Waffles, Yeast-biscuit.
Mr. Peterkin was proud and astonished. “Excellent!” he cried. “Every letter represented except Z.” Mrs. Peterkin drew from her pocket a letter from the lady from Philadelphia. “She thought you would call it X-cellent for X, and she tells us,” she read, “that if you come with a zest, you will bring the Z.”
Mr. Peterkin was enchanted. He only felt that he ought to invite the children in the primary schools to such a breakfast; what a zest, indeed, it would give to the study of their letters!