"Ah! It's very nice," said Toby. "It ain't—I suppose it ain't Polonies?"
"No, no, no!" cried Meg, delighted. "Nothing like Polonies!"
"No," said Toby, after another sniff. "It's—it's mellower than Polonies. It's very nice. It improves every moment. It's too decided for Trotters. Ain't it?"
Meg was in ecstasy. He could not have gone wider of the mark than Trotters—except Polonies.
"Liver?" said Toby, communing with himself. "No. There's a mildness about it that don't answer to liver. Pettitoes? No. It an't faint enough for pettitoes. It wants the stringiness of Cocks' heads. And I know it an't sausages. I'll tell you what it is. It's chitterlings!"
"No, it an't!" cried Meg, in a burst of delight "No, it an't!"
"Why, what am I a thinking of!" said Toby, suddenly recovering a position as near the perpendicular as it was possible for him to assume. "I shall forget my own name next. It's tripe!"
Tripe it was; and Meg, in high joy, protested he should say, in half a minute more, it was the best tripe ever stewed.
"And so," said Meg, busying herself exultingly with her basket; "I'll lay the cloth at once, father; for I have brought the tripe in a basin, and tied the basin up in a pocket-handkerchief; and if I like to be proud for once, and spread that for a cloth, and call it a cloth, there's no law to prevent me; is there father?"
"Not that I know of, my dear," said Toby. "But they're always a bringing up some new law or other."