Alden stared, and his wife interposed:-- “He says he’ll have some, father. Did you know that George Soule had set up as dry-salter for the town, Alick?” “Yes, I heard so. Indeed, father bought a quintal of dun and another of white fish of him,” replied Alick, wondering what Betty and Sally were laughing about. “Now I don’t see why the captain portioned them that fashion,” mused John Alden, rapidly distributing the fish into fourteen empty trenchers. “For doubtless he knows as well as I, or rather your mother knows as well as our housewife here, that the only way to cook your fish aright is to bind a good dunfish carefully between two whitefish, and steep the three all night in lukewarm water; then in the morning to cast out that water and put in fresh, and again steep it so nigh the fire that it ever tries to boil yet never makes out. Finally, when all else is ready, master dunfish is released from his bondage, and carefully laid upon a platter unbroken, while his bedfellows the whitefish are thrown to the ducks or the pigs”-- “Or made into a mince wherein no man can tell the white from the dun fish,” interposed Priscilla. “Why, father, I should suppose you’d been ship’s cook all your youth, and major-domo ever since. I never mistrusted you knew how a salt codfish should be cooked.” “I see a mort of things I don’t talk about,” retorted Alden quietly, “and if you knew not more than most women, I could tell you just how master tomcod should be served.” “Try it, father!” cried Betty, who was her father’s darling and might say what she liked, because she never liked to say anything amiss. “Tell us now without looking around the board, tell us what should lie on it to be eaten with salt codfish.” “Well, there must be a white sauce, compounded of cream and wheaten flour and butter; and there must be pork-scraps cut in dice and fried of a dainty brown; and there must be beets boiled tender, but not cut to let out the color; and there must be parsnips and turnips and onions; and there must be brown bread and white bread; and there must be sallet oil and mustard; and above all, there must be a good flagon of cider, and another to back it.” “Right, right! Here’s every one of the things you told about and more, for here’s a dish of those roots John Howland got in Boston of the sloop trading to the Carolinas. Molly begged so hard for them that mother cooked some, but I doubt if they will suit with salt fish.” “Father told of eating some in Boston, but we’ve had none as yet,” said Alick, and Sally, taking up one of the sweet potatoes, broke it in two and handed a piece across the table to Alick, who, eating it skin and all, as if it were a fruit, declared it with sincerity to be the most delicious morsel he had ever tasted.