"How did you come to know that?"
"I first observed it when I was a little girl and you sometimes came to dine with us. They say that it is a species of superstition; the tit-bit placed at the side of the plate signifies that our distant true love is suffering from hunger."
"It is no superstition, but a simple rule of health to leave off eating and drinking while your appetite is still at its best."
Thus we continued our dietetic discussions as if we had no other desire in the world than to live a ripe old age and be free from gout.
I have already mentioned that there was chopped-up chicken in the soup, and that portion of the chicken fell to Bessy's lot which is known as the spur-bone.
Now, it is a well-known custom among young unmarried ladies in confidential conclave, when one of them gets such a spur-bone, for her to invite her fair colleague to crack the bone with her. One of them then takes one end of the spur-bone and the other takes the other end, and they pull away in different directions till the bone comes in two. Whichever of them gets the spur portion will be married soonest. That is a fantastic sort of superstition, if you like.
Bessy laughed and said:
"When we ate our first dinner together, a spur-bone of this sort fell into my hands. I stretched it out towards Anna. 'Pull,' I said, 'and see which of us is to have Kvatopil.'"
"Then you got to be good friends pretty quickly?"
"Why shouldn't we? Hadn't we both the same husband? I naturally kept them here with me. I don't know what would have become of them if I hadn't taken them in. At this moment they haven't got a farthing. They travelled the whole distance on coffee only. They had no other upper garments but what they were actually wearing on their bodies.... My first duty was to get them properly dressed. My clothes fitted the woman very well, and I bought some for the child in Kerepesi Street. But the little one had to take to her bed immediately, for she had a bad headache and was very feverish. I sent for a doctor, and he gave her some medicine which sent her to sleep. She and her mother have slept in my bed ever since, and I sleep on the sofa.—Won't you have a little liver?"