"Be careful, Mr. Stoneman, for I am afraid it has a crack. Sally says they cannot make them, as they used to do! But as I was saying, both my father and my mother are thoroughly aware of all your good-will. And there is not a tenant on the property, I am sure——"
"How can I think about the blessed tenants? Though of course I try to do my duty to them. But oh, do give me a little taste of butter after that."
"Am I a rogue, that I should dare do such a thing? Twenty-two pounds there, and not a pennyweight to spare. And old Mrs. Ramshorn made a fuss last time. After a cigar, how can you taste? Your taste must be very far from perfect."
"My taste is absolute perfection; and that is why—what I mean is, why I enjoy this most exquisite result. But a coward is ever so much worse than a rogue; and to shrink from the test is cowardly. I could never have believed it of Miss Cranleigh."
"Very well. But you shall pay for what you eat. I will take it from one of your own pats, that are going to the Hall in half an hour. But you must not blame me if it is not first-rate. Slemmick, the cleverest man we have, says that there is a leaf coming down now, which gets between the blades of grass, and it is useless for the cows to blow at it, for it makes a point of getting into their very finest butter. George calls it nonsense. But what right has he, when Slemmick was brought up so much more out of doors?"
"Slemmick is sure to know most about it. A man who has never heard the names of things, always knows most about them. Therefore do let me give true judgment on the butter."
"Then you have never heard the name of butter!"
"Oh dear, oh dear! you leave one less than a shred of the soundest argument," was the reply of the infatuated stockbroker. "Reason" would have been the noun to use, after a twelvemonth of matrimony.
"Now you must understand," said Grace, in the flush of that triumph of intellect, "that nothing ever tastes its best, when taken out of its proper course. No metal should ever be used with fresh butter. This is a blade of hard white wood, I quite forget the name of it. But I can easily find out. Let me run and ask old Sally. You can't wait? Very well, then I must cut it short, and tell you when you come back from Venice. But to think that I made all of those, and the ready money they will fetch!"