“Dinner’s ready, and Mr. Smith not home yet.” Mrs. Smith arose blushing and embarrassed. “Only ham and eggs,” she said; “but would you, just for the sake of old times——” “Would I?” cried Mrs. Carter, huddling the baby into it’s cradle, and taking off her gloves. “Won’t I?” CHAPTER XX. OVER THEIR TEA. Kate Gorman had received a hint from her mistress and drawn the table out from against the wall, a trouble she seldom undertook merely for the household. She also spread a clean damask table-cloth over it, and gave her knives an extra scour before she put them on the table. Then she took particular pains with the ham, and left a fried egg upon the top of each slice, with the unbroken yolk gleaming like a ball of gold in the centre of the white, which was beautifully browned on the edges. To these dainties she added a glass dish full of quince preserves, and some nice green pickles, that contrasted gorgeously with the gold of the egg and the red of the ham, when they got on the same plate together. “Now this is something like,” said Mrs. Carter, pulling off her canary-colored gloves with a succession of little jerks, and seating herself at the table. “I haven’t set down to such a dinner in years. The very sight of it is enough to warm one’s heart.” “Oh,” answered Mrs. Smith, “if I had only known you were coming? but it is only a tea dinner. I feel quite ashamed, and turkeys hanging in rows down stairs, with cranberries by the bushel.” “Oh, mercy on me! don’t think of it,—turkeys indeed! I can get them every day of my life; but a bit of ham like this, I shouldn’t dare to ask my cook for it. She’d sing out shoddy, and quit the kitchen in less than no time.” “Then you really like it?” “Really like it? I should think so,” answered Mrs. Carter, feeling like a truant school girl as she balanced a fragment of egg on the point of her knife, and gloried in the vulgarity from the depths of her soul. “If you only knew, Smith, what a comfort it is to eat just as you please, and just what you please.” “But don’t you?” questioned the hostess, holding her own loaded knife half way to her mouth, and opening her eyes wide. “Dear no! Why, Mrs. Smith, I should just as soon think of jumping out of the window, as to ask for a plate of corned beef and cabbage in my own house!” “Dear me, you don’t say so?” “The truth is, you’re expected to eat things that you don’t know the name of, and turn against when you do. There is patty de for grow, now.” “Patty what?” questioned Mrs. Smith. “De for grow!” answered Mrs. Carter, with emphasis. Mrs. Smith shook her head. “Never heard the name before. One of your upper crust friends, I suppose,” she said, in a bewildered way. “No, no, its only the livers of over-crammed geese; but if you were to ask for gooseliver, the waiters would just laugh in your face. They’ve done it, Mrs. Smith, done it to me and Carter, too!”