uch
a supposition as that.

"Do take a bit," said Mr. Townsend, hospitably. "The fins should not
have been cut off, otherwise I never saw a finer fish in my life."

"None, I am very much obliged to you," said Mr. Carter, with sternest
reprobation of feature.

It was too much for Mrs. Townsend. "Oh, Aeneas," said she, "what are
we to do?" Mr. Townsend merely shrugged his shoulders, while he
helped himself. His feelings were less acute, perhaps, than those
of his wife, and he, no doubt, was much more hungry. Mr. Carter
the while sat by, saying nothing, but looking daggers. He also was
hungry, but under such circumstances he would rather starve than eat.

"Don't you ever eat fish, Mr. Carter?" said Mr. Townsend, proceeding
to help himself for a second time, and poking about round the edges
of the delicate creature before him for some relics of the glutinous
morsels which he loved so well. He was not, however, enjoying it
as he should have done, for seeing that his guest ate none, and
that his wife's appetite was thoroughly marred, he was alone in his
occupation. No one but a glutton could have feasted well under such
circumstances, and Mr. Townsend was not a glutton.

"Thank you, I will eat none to-day," said Mr. Carter, sitting bolt
upright, and fixing his keen gray eyes on the wall opposite.

"Then you may take away, Biddy; I've done with it. But it's a
thousand pities such a fish should have been so wasted."

The female heart of Mrs. Townsend could stand these wrongs no longer,
and with a tear in one corner of her eye, and a gleam of anger in the
other, she at length thus spoke out. "I am sure then I don't know
what you will eat, Mr. Carter, and I did think that all you English
clergymen always ate fish in Lent,--and indeed nothing else; for
indeed people do say that you are much the same as the papists in
that respect."

"Hush, my dear!" said Mr. Townsend.

"Well, but I can't hush when there's nothing for the gentleman to
eat."

"My dear madam, such a matter does not signify in the least," said
Mr. Carter, not unbending an inch.

"But it does signify; it signifies a great deal; and so you'd know if
you were a family man;"--"as you ought to be," Mrs. Townsend would
have been delighted to add. "And I'm sure I sent Jerry five miles,
and he was gone four hours to get that bit of fish from Paddy
Magrath, as he stops always at Ballygibblin Gate; and indeed I
thought myself so lucky, for I only gave Jerry one a