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Fortunately, that big-hearted creature could always find a “way out” of most difficulties, and she promptly settled the quilt question, saying:

“Well, if she didn’t get it for a keepsake gift, it’s hern all the same and she shall have it a-Christmas, and you needn’t touch to tell me she shan’t. Even if I be to ‘Boston,’ come that day, an’ I have to badger the very life out of my son John to get him to send it to her then. But dinner, Gabriell’! I don’t feel as if I could eat a single bite. Do you, yourself, honey?”

This time Ninian felt as if he could shake her. He knew that it would be small appetite, indeed, Mrs. Trent would bring even to that fine menu he meant to lay before her, and here was thoughtless Aunt Sally almost intimating that dining at all would, to-day, be an indecency. So there was more real feeling than appeared in his rejoinder:

“Look here, Mrs. Benton! I wager that with all your present ‘suffering’ you’ll yet be able to make a good square meal. One, maybe, that it’ll tax my pocket-book to pay for!”