they are always very light
coloured."

"I beg your pardon, but they are not, as far as my observation goes,"
said her husband; "then these are thick, they ought to be thin and
delicate-looking."

"You are thinking of something else, Philip," said Mrs. Thorne,
patronisingly. "Buckwheat cakes never look differently from these; I
have noticed them at a great many places."

"You never ate them at my mother's or you could not say so, my dear."

Mrs. Thorne stirred her coffee vigorously. Was Philip going to turn
out to be one of those detestable men who always go about telling how
"their mother" used to do; "my mother," as if there was no other
mother in the world that amounted to anything.

"I always have noticed," she said, "that a person imagines, after
being from home a few years that there is nothing quite so good as he
used to get at home; even the very same things never tasted quite as
they used to. The reason is plain: taste changes as one grows older."

This very sage remark was just a little annoying to Mr. Thorne; he
was ten years the senior of his wife, and did not like allusions to
"growing older." "No one need try to convince me," he answered quite
warmly, "that I shall ever cease to enjoy the dishes my mother used
to get up if I live to be as old as Methuselah! She is the best cook
I ever knew, and she never made cakes like these."

"My mother is a pattern housekeeper," said Mrs. Thorne, with a little
flash of her blue eye, "and her cakes look precisely like these."

"The proof of the pudding is in the eating, you will admit,
I suppose. Joanna need bring in no more cakes for me; they have a
sour, bitter taste which is decidedly unpalatable."

And he arose from the table, passed into the hall and out of the
front door without his usual leave-taking.

Satan once worked immense mischief by means of an apple; now he must
needs come into that pretty dining-room and hide in a plate of
buckwheat cakes. The first approach to a quarrel in this household,
and the first buckwheat cakes of the season! The truth is, when Mr.
Thorne had said the day before, "What if we have some buckwheat
cakes?" that Ruey did not feel all the confidence in her ability
that her answer implied; but then there was her receipt-book; "they
could not be difficult," she reasoned. The receipt said: "Mix warm
water, flour and yeast, and let rise until morning,"--these
instructions she had faithfully followed, and here was the result.