'What have you got there?' said Christopher, peering over at the dish on the hearth which Mrs. Bounder was filling from a pot before the fire. She laughed. 'You wouldn't be any wiser ef I told you. It's a little o' everything. Give me a good garden, and I kin live as well as I want to, and cost no one more'n a few shillin's, neither. 'Tain't difficult, ef you know how. Now see what you say to that.' She dished up her supper, put a plate of green pickles on the table, filled up her tea-pot, and cut some slices from a beautiful brown loaf, which must have rivalled the rye, though it was not that colour. Christopher sat down, said grace reverently, and attacked the viands, while the mistress poured him out a cup of tea. 'Christopher,' she said, as she handed it to him, 'I'd jes' like to ask you something.' 'What is it?' 'I'd like to know jes' why you go through that performance?' 'Performance?' echoed Christopher. 'What are you talkin' about?' 'I mean, that bit of a prayer you think it is right to make whenever you're goin' to put your fork to your mouth.' 'Oh! I couldn't imagine what you were driving at. Why do I do it?' 'I'd like to know, ef you think you kin tell.' 'Respectable folk always does it.' 'Hm! I don' know about that. So it's for respectability you keep it up?' 'No,' said Christopher, a little embarrassed how to answer. 'It's proper. Don't you know the Bible bids us give thanks?' 'Wall, hev you set out to du all the rest o' the things the Bible bids you du?--that's jes' what I'm comin' to.' A surly man would not perhaps have answered at all, resenting this catechizing; but Christopher was not surly, and not at all offended. He was perplexed a little; looked at his wife in some sly wonder at her, but answered not. 'Ef I began, I'd go through. I wouldn't make no half way with it; that's all I was goin' to say,' his wife went on, with a grave face that showed she was not jesting. 'It's saying a good deal!' remarked Christopher, still looking at her. 'It's sayin' a good deal, to make the first prayer; but ef I made the first one, I'd make all the rest. I don't abide no half work in _my_ garden, Christopher; that's what I was thinkin'; and I don't believe Him you pray to likes it no better.' Christopher was utterly unprepared to go on with this subject; and finally gave up trying, and attended to his supper. After a little while his wife struck a new theme. She was not a trained rhetorician; but when she had said what she had to say she was always contented to stop. 'How are things going up your way to-day?' she asked. 'My way is down here, I'm happy to say.' 'Wall, up to the colonel's, then. What's the news?' 'Ain't no sort o' news. Never is. They're always at the old things. The colonel he lies on his sofy, and Miss Esther she goes and comes. They want to get a house in town, now she's goin' so regular, only they can't find one to fit.' 'Kin't find a house? I thought there was houses enough in all New York.'