Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/136



One of the things which Mrs. Abram Pantin's worst enemy would have had to admit in her favor was that, strictly speaking, she was not a gossip, though this virtue was due as much to policy as to principle. It was her custom, however, to retain in her memory such morsels of common knowledge news as she accumulated during the day with which to entertain Mr. Pantin at evening dinner, for she observed that if his thoughts could be diverted from business it aided his digestion and he slept better, so she strove always to have some bright topic to introduce at the table.

Having said a silent grace, Mr. Pantin inquired mechanically:

"Will you have a chop. Prissy?" Since there were only two he did not use the plural.

Mrs. Pantin looked across the fern centerpiece and made a mouth as she regarded the chop doubtfully.

"I'm afraid I am eating too much meat lately."

Impaled on a tine of the fork, the chop was of a thinness to have enabled one to read through it without much difficulty.

Mr. Pantin placed the chop on his own plate with some little alacrity.

As his wife took one of the two dainty rolls concealed in a fringed napkin on the handsome silver bread tray,