Page:On Our Selection.djvu/227

Rh rule. They pick, and paw, and fiddle round a meal in a way that gives a healthy-appetited person the jim-jams. She did n't touch the fried pumpkin. And the way she sat there at the table in her watch-chain and ribbons made poor old Dave, who sat opposite her in a ragged shirt without a shirt-button, feel quite miserable and awkward.

For a whole week she did n't take anything but bread and tea—though there was always plenty good pumpkin and all that. Mother used to speak to Dad about it, and wonder if she ate the little pumpkin-tarts she put up for her lunch. Dad could n't understand anyone not eating pumpkin, and said he'd tackle grass before he'd starve.

"And did ever y' see such a object?" Mother went on. "The hands an' arms on her! Dear me! why, I do believe if our Sal was to give her one squeeze she'd kill her. Oh, but the finery and clothes! Y' never see the like! Just look at her! "And Dad, the great oaf, with Joe at his heels, followed her into the young lady's bedroom.

"Look at that!" said Mother, pointing to a couple of dresses hanging on a nail—"she wears them on week-days, no less; and here" (raising the lid of a trunk and exposing a pile of clean and neatly-folded clothing that might have been anything, and drawing the articles forth one by one)—"look at them! There's that—and that—and this—and"

"I say, what 's this, Mother?" interrupted Joe, holding up something he had discovered.