Kate was called on to make the first cut of the monster. A faint colour had returned to her cheeks since she had come home. She was talking a little, and even laughing sometimes, as if the weight on her heart was lightening every moment. She rose at the call, took, with the hand nearest to the dish, the knife that her father held out, and plunged it into the pudding. As she did so, with all eyes upon her, the wedding-ring on her finger flashed in the light and was seen by everybody.
“Look at that, though,” cried Black Tom. “There's the wife for a husband, if you plaze. Ashamed of showing it, is she? Not she, the bogh.”
Then there was much giggling among the younger women, and cries of “Aw, the poor girl! Going to church has been making her left-handed!”
“Time enough, my beauties,” cried Pete; “and mind you're not struck that way yourselves one of these days.”
Away went the dishes, and the parson rose to return thanks.
“Never heard that grace but once before, Parson Quiggin,” said Pete, “and then”—lighting his pipe—“then it was a burial sarvice.”
“A burial sarvice!”
A dozen voices echoed the words together, and in a moment the table was quiet.
“Yes, though,” said Pete. “It was up at Johannesburg. Two chums settled there, and one married a girl. Nice lil thing, too; some of the Boer girls, you know; but not much ballast at her at all. The husband went up country for the Consolidated Co., and when he came back there was trouble. Chum had been sweethearting the wife a bit!”
“Aw, dear!”—“Aw, well, well!”