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"Ah!" he said, "we farmers ought not to have much time for reading; yet
somehow one can't help it."

"What a pretty room!" said Miss Matey, _sotto voce_.

"What a pleasant place!" said I, aloud, almost simultaneously.

"Nay! if you like it," replied he; "but can you sit on these great black
leather three-cornered chairs? I like it better than the best parlor; but
I thought ladies would take that for the smarter place."

It was the smarter place; but, like most smart things, not at all pretty,
or pleasant, or home-like; so, while we were at dinner, the servant-girl
dusted and scrubbed the counting-house chairs, and we sate there all the
rest of the day.

We had pudding before meat; and I thought Mr. Holbrook was going to make
some apology for his old-fashioned ways, for he began,

"I don't know whether you like newfangled ways."

"Oh! not at all!" said Miss Matey.

"No more do I," said he. "My housekeeper _will_ have things in her new
fashion; or else I tell her, that when I was a young man, we used to keep
strictly to my father's rule, 'No broth, no ball; no ball, no beef;' and
always began dinner with broth. Then we had suet puddings, boiled in the
broth with the beef; and then the meat itself. If we did not sup our
broth, we had no ball, which we liked a deal better; and the beef came
last of all, and only those had it who had done justice to the broth and
the ball. Now folks begin with sweet things, and turn their dinners
topsy-turvy."

When the ducks and green pease came, we looked at each other in dismay; we
had only two-pronged, black-handled forks. It is true, the steel was as
bright as silver; but, what were we to do? Miss Matey picked up her peas,
one by one, on the point of the prongs, much as Amine ate her grains of
rice after her previous feast with the Ghoul. Miss Pole sighed over her
delicate young peas as she left them on one side of her plate untasted;
for they _would_ drop between the prongs. I looked at my host: the peas
were going wholesale into his capacious mouth, shoveled up by his large
round-ended knife. I saw, I imitated, I survived! My friends, in spite of
my precedent, could not muster up courage enough to do an ungenteel thing;
and, if Mr. Holbrook had not been so heartily hungry, he would, probably,
have seen that the good pease went away almost untouched.

After dinner, a clay-pipe was brought in, and a spittoon; and, asking us
to retire to another room, where he woul