"This is some beef-tea--a most excellent form in which to give nourishment to invalids like Mr. Bunce."
"Beef-tea, indeed! It's more like half-melted glue to look at. Ugh!"
"Quite natural in you to say so, Mrs. McQuirter. So few people know what beef-tea really should be like. It is the strength of the stock, which has jellied in cooling, that gives it the appearance you allude to. If you will just warm a cupful in a saucepan as it is wanted, without letting it boil, you will find it delicious. Try a little of it yourself, I know you will like it."
"Not me! And do you know, miss, how many large knuckles of beef I have boiled into tea in the last ten days? And scarce a drop has he let pass his lips! All clean gone to waste. I don't hold with beef-tea for Mr. Bunce no ways. He seems to hate it like pizen."
"I am not surprised at his having refused the decoction I saw sent up to him yesterday," said Judith with a relish. It seemed that notwithstanding her forbearance she was to have an innings, and she meant to use it in truly Christian fashion; not to exult openly, but to rub any blistering truth which came to hand well into the bone. "In making beef-tea all fat is carefully removed, and the meat is then placed in a jar with salt and cold water, near the fire, where it must stand for hours without boiling or even simmering. Now, really, Mrs. McQuirter," and she dipped a teaspoon in the jar, "just taste how good it is! If you will warm a cup or so of it two or three times a day I am confident you will have no difficulty in getting Mr. Bunce to drink it."
"I think I see me trying it, miss! And it shows your assurance to be evening me to the like. You are but a young lady yet, so to say, though you were born ten years before myself, I guess, as am the mother of six--leastways you are but an old maid, when all is said, and to take upon you to tell me how to make beef-tea! Me, as am the mother of six, and has buried a good husband. And many a bowl of my beef-tea the poor man drank, and him lying on the very feather bed where the parson lies now."
"And he died, Mrs. McQuirter? I am not surprised," said Miss Judith, thinking more of her argument and less of conciliation as the talk went on. "I observed the mixture yesterday when Mr. Bunce was unable to swallow it--a mere mixture of grease and warm water. Do you not know that at boiling point albumen coagulates, and becomes insoluble, like the white of a hard-boiled egg? You would not expect the water you boil eggs in to be very nourishing? Your beef-tea is just like that, and if your late husband's dietary contained no more nourishing items, I cannot wonder that he did not survive."
"You owdacious old maid, you! How daar you? To insinniwate that me as has fairly slaved for my man and his children had a hand to his taking off. But I'll have the law of you, I will! and I take Mr. Bunce in there as must have heard ye, if he's awake yet, to witness that you said it. Me, the mother of six, to be insulted and put upon by an old thing as never was able to get married at all! And it shows the men's good sense, that same. And here you come with your broths and your messes after my poor young gentleman, as is laid on the broad of his back, and too sick to run away from you like the rest. And it's a disgrace to your sect, you are, miss! for all your silk, and your sealskin, and me but a poor lone widdy with a quiet lodger--to be coming here at all hours acourting a gentleman as don't want you--you that are old enough to be his grandmother and should be at home making your soul, for your change as must come before long, 'stead of running that shameless after the men to make them marry you."
"Oh!" was all that Judith could utter, throwing up her black gloved hands to the ceiling and then dropping in a heap on a stool in the corner and burying her face in her handkerchief. The wordy hurricane had fallen on the flower--an elderflower--and beaten it down and crushed it; and there she cowered in her confusion, convulsed with sobs, while the hurricane whistled but the more wildly in its triumph, and would fain have scattered and dispersed the ruin it had already made.
"And well may you hide your face after sich ongoings! and it don't become one as sets up for quality to have done the like; to be coming here a worritting of a poor young gentleman to marry her, as it's quite oncertain if he will see the light of next week! Or is it that you think you will make the people say he has treated you bad if he don't, after you coming here so often? But the people knows better, miss! and they say you're too old for him; and that you've been worritting around him that long, it's a fair amazement between his patience and your perseverance whatever comes of it. The very rector of the parish takes notice on it, and the rector's lady says its shameless the way you go on to make him marry you!"