"What's queer?" asked her mother.
Cordelia stopped short as she was about setting a tumbler of water beside a plate, and the water slopped over.
"Why," said Adrianna, her face paling, "I—thought there was boiled dinner. I—smelt cabbage cooking."
"I knew there would something else come up," gasped Cordelia, leaning hard on the back of Adrianna's chair.
"What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Townsend sharply, but her own face began to assume the shocked pallour which it was so easy nowadays for all their faces to assume at the merest suggestion of anything out of the common.
"I smelt cabbage cooking all the morning up in my room," Adrianna said faintly, "and here's codfish and potatoes for dinner."
The Townsends all looked at one another. David rose with an exclamation and rushed out of the room. The others waited tremblingly. When he came back his face was lowering.
"What did you—" Mrs. Townsend asked hesitatingly.
"There's some smell of cabbage out there," he admitted reluctantly. Then he looked at her with a challenge. "It comes from the next house," he said. "Blows over our house."
"Our house is higher."