The door opened and Mary, with pink cheeks and dancing eyes, brought in and deposited before me my favourite dish. Asparagus on toast. I looked at it longingly, feverishly! I was famishing. My throat was dry and my eyes had a savage glare. I had heard of men going mad for want of food. I know now how they felt. At first I could not speak. I was obliged to swallow violently. "There!" cried Mary, triumphantly. "You can't pass that up!" "Alas!" I sighed, shaking my head. I looked at her and felt simply murderous. That white-haired old woman's obstinacy in not giving us our dinner on time was the cause of all my misery. I resolved to rub it in. Her face was a study. "Did you ever," I said, mournfully, "see me refuse asparagus before?" "You're never going to refuse it!" exclaimed Mary, incredulously. "Missis! I used a pint of cream, to say nothing of the butter! Why, it's a sin! It's a mortal sin in you not to try it! See, Missis, let me put a little on your plate. I'll feed it to you like as if you were a baby! I will indeed!" "No," I said, clutching at the table-cloth to keep from falling upon that dish of asparagus and shovelling it down my throat in huge handfuls,--"no, I couldn't! Mary! I am too weak, really, I think I am starving!" I leaned back and closed my eyes. The clock struck nine. "You've had nothing to eat all day!" cried Mary. "You had only a bite for your lunch, and that was eight hours ago! Oh, Missis, dear! Ain't I the mean dog! Let me make you a cup of tea! Missis dear! In the name of God eat something! Do!" "No," I said. "I have always been this way. If I go five minutes over the time when I expect my dinner, I feel just this way. I can't eat." With which astonishing lie, I leaned back as if death were already looming up in the distance. Mary made one more attack. Salad was the Angel's weak point as asparagus was mine, and Mary always made a dream of beauty out of it. She scorned "_fatiguer la laitue_" as the French do. Instead she kept it in a bowl of water until thoroughly "awake," as she called it. Then carefully examining each leaf separately, she tied them in a wet cloth and laid them "spang on the ice," which course of treatment rendered them so crisp that to cut them with a sharp salad-fork was always to get a little dressing splashed in one's eye. Furthermore she arranged them in the best cut-glass dish in symmetrical rows with the scarlet tomatoes tucked invitingly in the centre. She presented us with such a dish on this evening. Then when Aubrey (who will be remembered when he is no more, not for his moral qualities nor for his domestic virtues, but for the skill with which he used to mix a salad dressing) went to work and prepared one from tarragon, vinegar, oil, Nepaul pepper, paprika, black and cayenne pepper, to say nothing of plenty of salt,--words fail me! I simply pass away at the recollection.