"Now, then," said Mr. Parmalee, reappearing, "I've dispatched the slavery for provisions, and you've got to eat when they come. I won't have people living on one meal a day, and wishing they were in heaven, when I'm around."
"I will do whatever you think best, Mr. Parmalee," she said, humbly.
"You have been very good to me."
"I know it," said Mr. Parmalee. "I always do the polite thing with your sex. My mother was a woman. She's down in Maine now, and can churn and milk eight cows, and do chores, and make squash pie. Oh! them squash pies of my old lady's require to be eat to be believed in; and, for her sake, I always take to elderly female parties in distress. Here's the forage. Come in, Jane Anne, beloved of my soul, and dump 'em down and go."
Jane Anne did.
"Now, Mrs. Denover, you sit right up and fall to. Here's oysters, and here's mutton chops, raging hot, and baked potatoes—delicious to look at. And here's a glass of port wine, and you've got to drink it without a whimper. Mind what I told you; you don't budge a step to-morrow unless you eat a hearty supper to-night."
"You are very good to me," Mrs. Denover repeated. "What would have become of me but for you?"
She strove to eat and drink to please him and to sustain her feeble strength, but every morsel seemed to choke her. She pushed away her plate at last and looked at him imploringly.
"I can not eat another mouthful. Indeed I would if I could. I have no appetite at all of late."
"That's plain to be seen. Well, if you can't, you can't, of course. And now, as it's past nine, the best thing you can do is to go to bed at once."
With the same humility she had evinced throughout, the woman obeyed at once. Mr. Parmalee, left alone, sat over his oysters and his port, luxuriating in the thirty sovereigns in the present and the three hundred pounds in the prospective.