“I was just going to say, mother, that I wanted you to try and keep these gentlemen from going beyond our house to-night, because you can put it so much better than I can.”

The old lady, thereupon, so judiciously blended coaxing with the apology of disparagement, that the only alternative left the pedestrians was that of remaining; for to go on would have been to treat the disparagement as real, and a sufficient cause for their seeking other shelter.  The house they entered was small but neat.  It consisted almost altogether of one room, called a living room, which answered all the purposes of eating, sleeping and sitting.  Outside were a summer kitchen and a dairy or milk-house, and, a short distance off, were the barn and the stable, the sole occupant of the latter at the time being a cow that spent most of its leisure out of doors.  Supper did not take long preparing, and the travellers did ample justice to a very enjoyable meal.  The dominie engaged the hostess in conversation about German cookery, Sauer Kraut, Nudeln and various kinds of Eierkuchen, which she described with evident satisfaction.

“Mrs. Hill and Wilkinson are regular Deipnosophists,” remarked Coristine to the host.

“That’s too deep for me,” he whispered back.  “But tell it to the mistress now; she’s that fond of jawbreakers she’ll never forget it.”

“We were remarking, Mrs. Hill, that you and Wilkinson are a pair of Deipnosophists.”

The old man looked quizically at his wife, and she glanced in a questioning way at the dominie.

“My friend is trying to show off his learning at our expense,” the latter remarked.  “One Athenaeus, who lived in the second century, wrote a book with that name, containing conversations, like those in ’Wilson’s Noctes Ambrosianae,’ but upon gastronomy.”

“I was not aware,” said the hostess, “that they had gas so far back as that.”

Wilkinson bit his lip, but dared not explain, and the lawyer looked sheepish at the turn affairs were taking.

“It’s aisy remembered, mother,” put in the quondam schoolmaster.

“Think of astronomy, and that’ll give you gastronomy; and a gastronomer is a deipnosophist.  That’s two new words in one day and both meaning the same thing.”

The hostess turned to the dominie, with a little shrug of impatience at her husband, and remarked:  “The life of a deipnosophist in gastromical works must be a very trying one, from the impure air and the soft coal dust; do you not think so, Mr. Wilkinson?”

That gentleman thought it must, and the lawyer first chewed his moustache, and then blew his nose severely and long.  Fortunately, the meal was over, the host returned thanks, and the party left the table.  The old man took a pail and went to water the stock, which seemed to consist of the cow, while the wife put away the supper things, and prepared for the evening’s milking.

The pedestrians, being told there was nothing they could do, strolled out into the neighbouring pasture, and pretended to look among the weeds and stones, at the end of the fence farthest away from the stock-waterer for botanical and geological specimens; but, in reality, they were having a battle royal.