“For her father, yes, but other people don't mind her being pretty,” I persisted. “My wife says when Miss Talbert comes out into the garden, the other flowers have no chance.”
“Good for Mrs. Temple!” my neighbor shouted, joyously giving himself away.
I have always noticed that when you praise a girl's beauty to her father, though he makes a point of turning it off in the direction of her goodness, he likes so well to believe she is pretty that he cannot hold out against any persistence in the admirer of her beauty. My neighbor now said with the effect of tasting a peculiar sweetness in my words, “I guess I shall have to tell my wife, that.” Then he added, with a rush of hospitality, “Won't you come in and tell her yourself?”
“Not now, thank you. It's about our tea-time.”
“Glad it isn't your DINNER-time!” he said, heartily.
“Well, yes. We don't see the sense of dining late in a place like this. The fact is, we're both village-bred, and we like the mid-day dinner. We make rather a high tea, though.”
“So do we. I always want a dish of something hot. My wife thinks cake is light, but I think meat is.”
“Well, cake is the New England superstition,” I observed. “And I suppose York State, too.”
“Yes, more than pie is,” he agreed. “For supper, anyway. You may have pie at any or all of the three meals, but you have GOT to have cake at tea, if you are anybody at all. In the place where my wife lived, a woman's social standing was measured by the number of kinds of cake she had.”
We laughed at that, too, and then there came a little interval and I said, “Your place is looking fine.”