“Tea! I ha’n’t got no tea, and you know that well enough!”
“Well, give me a piece o’ sweetcake then, and a pickle.”
“The sweetcake was gone long ago, and I ha’n’t nothing to make more—so shut your head!” And as Clarissa whispered to the poor pallid child that she would bring him some if he would be a good boy, and not tease his mother, Mrs. Ashburn produced, from a barrel of similar delicacies, a yellow cucumber, something less than a foot long, “pickled” in whiskey and water—and this the child began devouring eagerly.
Miss Bensley now set out upon the table the varied contents of her basket. “This honey,” she said, showing some as limpid as water, “was found a day or two ago in uncle’s woods—wild honey—isn’t it beautiful?”
Mrs. Ashburn fixed her eyes on it without speaking; but her husband, who just then came in, did not command himself so far. “Where did you say you got that honey?” he asked.
“In our woods,” repeated Clarissa; “I never saw such quantities; and a good deal of it as clear and beautiful as this.”
“I thought as much!” said Ashburn angrily: “and now, Clary Bensley,” he added, “you’ll just take that cursed honey back to your uncle, and tell him to keep it, and eat it, and I hope it will choke him! and if I live, I’ll make him rue the day he ever touched it.”
Miss Bensley gazed on him, lost in astonishment. She could think of nothing but that he must have gone suddenly mad; and the idea made her instinctively hasten her steps toward the pony.
“Well! if you won’t take it, I’ll send it after ye!” cried Ashburn, who had lashed himself into a rage; and he hurled the little jar, with all the force of his powerful arm, far down the path by which Clarissa was about to depart, while his poor wife tried to restrain him with a piteous “Oh, father! don’t! don’t!”
Then, recollecting himself a little,—for he is far from being habitually brutal,—he made an awkward apology to the frightened girl.