“Good bread for once,” said the Squire, slashing into the smoking loaf; astonishing how dull those negroes are—­not to be able to learn such a simple thing as baking.”

“Simple!” muttered the lawyer, “it is not simple!  If you recollected something of chemistry, you would acknowledge that baking bread was no slight achievement.”

“Come, growl again,” said his host, laughing; “come, now, indulge your habit, and say the bread is sour.”

“It is!”

“What!—­sour!”

“Yes.”

The Squire stands aghast—­or rather sits, laboring under that sentiment.

“It is the best bread we have had for six months,” he says, at length, “and as sweet as a nut.”

“You have no taste,” says Mr. Rushton.

“No taste?”

“None:  and the fact that it is the best you have had for six months is not material testimony.  You may have had lead every morning—­humph!”

And Mr. Rushton continues his breakfast.

The Squire laughs.

“There you are—­in a bad humor,” he says.

“I am not.”

“Come! say that the broil is bad!”

“It is burnt to a cinder.”

“Burnt?  Why it’s underdone!”

“Well, sir—­every man to his taste—­you may have yours; leave me mine.”

“Oh, certainly; I see you are determined to like nothing.  You’ll say next that Lavinia’s butter is not sweet.”

The lawyer growls.

“I have no desire to offend Miss Lavinia,” he says, solemnly; “but I’ll take my oath that there’s garlic in it—­yes, sir, garlic!”

The Squire bursts into a roar of laughter.

“Good!” he cries—­“you are in a cheerful and contented mood.  You drop in just when Lavinia has perfected her butter, and made it as fresh as a nosegay; and when the cook has sent up bread as sweet as a kernel, to say nothing of the broil, done to a turn—­you come when this highly desirable state of things has been arrived at, and presume to say that this is done, that is burnt, the other is tainted with garlic!  Admire your own judgment!”

And the Squire laughs jovially at his discomfited and growling opponent.

“True, Lavinia has had lately much to distract her attention,” says the jest-hunting Squire; “but her things were never better in spite of—.  Well we won’t touch upon that subject!”

And the mischievous Squire laughs heartily at Miss Lavinia’s stately and reproving expression.

“What’s that?” says Mr. Rushton; “what subject?”

“Oh, nothing—­nothing.”

“What does he mean, madam?” asks Mr. Rushton, of the lady.

Miss Lavinia colors slightly, and looks more stately than ever.

“Nothing, sir,” she says, with dignity.

“‘Nothing!’ nobody ever means anything!”

“Oh, never,” says the Squire, and then he adds, mischievously,—­“by-the-by, Rushton, how is my friend, Mr. Roundjacket?”