Page:Comin' Thro' the Rye (1898).djvu/448

440 the dining-room table, come down!" says Dolly, rushing in; and I follow her in hot haste.

Heavy as my heart is, my heels are light enough. On Sundays, for some unknown reason, papa always seems to feel our numbers pressing more heavily upon him than any other day, and so to speak throws our existences in our faces as a fact of which we ought to be deeply and abidingly ashamed, although what finger we had in the pie, and why our presence in this life should be set down to our own determined and unaided obstinacy and vice, is rather more than we can understand. At these times the governor does not look upon us as decent responsible souls, but as so many mouths that he is bound to fill, and for my part I feel intensely ashamed of being obliged to eat at all, and that I should hold a very different position in his eyes if I could do without any such sublunary matters as food and drink and clothing. While he fulminates against the beef, the butcher, the carving knife, the plates, and the round world and all that is therein, I speculate as to whom he might consider a suitable person to rear and maintain his family, reserving to himself the small rights of controlling our souls, bodies, looks, words, and actions. Clearly he thinks it no legitimate affair of his; but a man who will adopt ten children and provide for them, is not to be met with every day. While as to Providence—whom he possibly regards as the person to blame—why, Providence, in providing us with a father, evidently considers it has done its duty, and there is an end o't. By the time the governor's plate is empty his angry mutters have ceased, and peace, dove-like and beef inspired, broods mildly over us.

The best of men is better full than empty, and the most rampagious of men is ten degrees less rampagious when he has eaten a good dinner; and if I were going to keep house, I would not forget that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. I will give Dolly excellent advice on the subject when she marries.