We had pudding before meat; and I thought Mr. Holbrook was going to make some apology for his old-fashioned ways, for he began,
“I don't know whether you like newfangled ways.”
“Oh! not at all!” said Miss Matey.
“No more do I,” said he. “My housekeeper will have things in her new fashion; or else I tell her, that when I was a young man, we used to keep strictly to my father's rule, ‘No broth, no ball; no ball, no beef;’ and always began dinner with broth. Then we had suet puddings, boiled in the broth with the beef; and then the meat itself. If we did not sup our broth, we had no ball, which we liked a deal better; and the beef came last of all, and only those had it who had done justice to the broth and the ball. Now folks begin with sweet things, and turn their dinners topsy-turvy.”
When the ducks and green pease came, we looked at each other in dismay; we had only two-pronged, black-handled forks. It is true, the steel was as bright as silver; but, what were we to do? Miss Matey picked up her peas, one by one, on the point of the prongs, much as Aminé ate her grains of rice after her previous feast with the Ghoul. Miss Pole sighed over [pg 462] her delicate young peas as she left them on one side of her plate untasted; for they would drop between the prongs. I looked at my host: the peas were going wholesale into his capacious mouth, shoveled up by his large round-ended knife. I saw, I imitated, I survived! My friends, in spite of my precedent, could not muster up courage enough to do an ungenteel thing; and, if Mr. Holbrook had not been so heartily hungry, he would, probably, have seen that the good pease went away almost untouched.
After dinner, a clay-pipe was brought in, and a spittoon; and, asking us to retire to another room, where he would soon join us, if we disliked tobacco-smoke, he presented his pipe to Miss Matey, and requested her to fill the bowl. This was a compliment to a lady in his youth; but it was rather inappropriate to propose it as an honor to Miss Matey, who had been trained by her sister to hold smoking of every kind in utter abhorrence. But if it was a shock to her refinement, it was also a gratification to her feelings to be thus selected; so she daintily stuffed the strong tobacco into the pipe; and then we withdrew.
“It is very pleasant dining with a bachelor,” said Miss Matey, softly, as we settled ourselves in the counting-house. “I only hope it is not improper; so many pleasant things are!”
“What a number of books he has!” said Miss Pole, looking round the room. “And how dusty they are!”
“I think it must be like one of the great Dr. Johnson's rooms,” said Miss Matey. “What a superior man your cousin must be!”
“Yes!” said Miss Pole; “he is a great reader; but I am afraid he has got into very uncouth habits with living alone.”