“I want to make you feel as ef nothin’ in the world had happened, Dick,” she said. “I’ve been a-fixin’ you a bed in the company-room, but you jest must be sensible about that.” “Law! anything will suit me,” he began. But the entrance of Marty interrupted his remark. She put the bread, the coffee, the meat, and the gravy on the table, and sat down in her place without a word. Lucinda glanced at Wakeman. “Come on, Dick,” she called out. “I ’ll bet yo’ ‘re hungry as a bear.” He drew out the chair that had been placed for him and sat down. Now an awkward situation presented itself. In the absence of a man Marty always asked the blessing. Lucinda wondered what would take place; one thing she knew well, and that was that Marty was too punctilious in religious matters to touch a bite of food before grace had been said by some one. But just then she noticed something about Wakeman that sent a little thrill of horror through her. Evidently his long life in prison had caused him to retrograde into utter forgetfulness of the existence of table etiquette, for he had drawn the great dish of fried meat toward him and was critically eying the various parts as he slowly turned it round. “What a fool I am,” he said, the delightful savor of the meat rendering him momentarily oblivious of his former wife’s forbidding aspect. “I laid aside the lights o’ that littlest shote an’ firmly intended to ax you to fry ’em fer me, but--” Lucinda’s stare convinced him that something had gone wrong. “Marty’s waitin’ fer somebody to ax the blessin’,” she explained. “Blessin’? Good gracious!” he grunted, his effusiveness dried up. “That went clean out ’n my mind. But a body that’s tuk his meals on a tin plate in a row o’ fellers waitin’ fer the’r turn four years hand-runnin’, ain’t expected to--” He went no further, seeming to realize that the picture he was drawing was tending to widen the distance between him and the uncompromising figure opposite him. He folded his hands so that his arms formed a frame for his plate, and said in a mellow bass voice: “Good Lord, make us duly thankful fer the bounteous repast that Thy angels has seed fit to spread before us to-night. Cause each of us to inculcate sech a frame of mind as will not let us harbor ill will ag’in our neighbors, an’ finally, when this shadowy abode is dispersed by the light of Thy glory, receive us all into Thy grace. This we beg in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.” He ended in some confusion. A red spot hovered over each of his cheek-bones. “I clean forgot that part about good crops an’ fair weather,” he said to Lucinda. “But you see it’s been four yeer sence I said it over, an’ a man o’ my age oughtn’t to be expected to know a thing like a younger person.” “Help yorese’f to the meat an’ pass the dish to Marty.” replied Miss Dykes. “Ef I was you, I’d not be continually a-bringin’ up things about the last four yeer.”