I have never seen a mass of woman so complacent and imperturbable. She sat basking in speechless comfort, and only emitted, at intervals and at large, rich oracular remarks about the food. These might be understood to owe their provocation either to the nice constitution of some particular dish, or dishes, or to one’s unappreciative attitude towards such in their passing. Thus, the dictum “The leg of a pheasant and the wing of a grouse,” pronounced significantly during the game course, may have been interpretable into a general proposition of fitness or a personal admonition--there was no telling from the expression of the speaker, because she was absolutely without any, nor from the direction of her eyes, which she could only move by moving her whole body with them, a process much too laborious for the occasion. I could never get rid, however, of an uncomfortable feeling that there was something in these utterances aimed aggressively at myself and my gastronomic perversity, as when, as if in correction of some spirit of contradictoriness observed in me, she suddenly decreed, “Fry bread-crumbs in butter, but sippets in dripping,” or appeared, when I was in the very act of helping myself from a particular dish, to throw an unfounded aspersion upon my age by asserting with finality, “Crack no nuts at all, if you can’t crack ’em with your teeth.” Her last remark but one occurred at dessert, when she suddenly asseverated, without looking at anything, “The late Prince Consort always ate his orange with a spoon,” a statement which caused me blushingly to lay down my knife and fork. And finally, having eaten a stupendous dinner, with the large unimpassioned confidence of one who had never yet been mistaken in her digestion, with the observation on her lips that “The late Duke of Wellington used to remark that when it’s time to turn over it’s time to turn out,” she was wheeled from the room by the man called Richard, and disappeared from my ken for ever. But Johnny (who, by the way, wore a white waistcoat, with real turquoise buttons), put my inward sniggering all to shame by his perfectly natural acceptance of this remarkable parent. He was dutiful, and attentive, and always respectful in his attitude towards her--unconscious of any reason, indeed, why she should figure as something slightly abnormal to alien eyes. It had occurred to me, irresistibly but abominably, how Ira would have regarded such a mother-in-law. Now, hearing the good fellow expatiating on his mamma’s generosity and loving-kindness, I was ashamed of myself and joined warmly in the eulogium.