Australian Tales - Setis

“I have just a lee-tle bit of pickled pork here, will you take a thin slice,
Mr. Grubb?” asked Mrs. Tiddle, with hidden meaning in her words,
which touched her husband's feelings like tailor's needles.
“If you please, ma'am; I am very partial to pickled pork and peaspudding,”
said Mr. Grubb, passing his plate.
“It is a nice dish,” groaned Mr. Tiddle, trying to smile, but looking as
ghastly as a pig's cheek overcooked. “We have no peas-pudding, but we
have a taste of broad beans, will you take a spoonful, sir?”
“Broad beans? O yes, by all means, they are my favorite vegetable,
next to fried onions. My poor wife too was very fond of broad beans and
melted butter, though they always made her peevish, poor thing.
Thankee, Tiddle — plenty; I can come again, you know, thankee — I
really begin to feel I have an appetite after all.”
“Mary Ann, how dare you come to table in that dirty pinafore, Miss?”
vociferated her mother, at the same moment giving her, what is generally
mis-called a good box on the ear, and a peremptory command to go into
the kitchen and stay there till she was called or sent for.
“Poor Mary Ann!” sighed Mr. Tiddle, with a sympathising glance at
his weeping daughter. “What part do you prefer, Becky?”
“I don't want any,” said his wife sharply, “my appetite is clean taken
away by that girl's dirty pinafore.”
“Nonsense, love! Here's a nice cut with a kidney in it, and a lump of
stuffing.”
“It's the tenderest rabbit I ever tasted,” remarked Mr. Grubb, with his
mouth full and his plate half emptied. “I really enjoy it. I wish my poor
wife were here, she doted on rabbit dead or alive, — I'll trouble you for
another spoonful of gravy, Tiddle.”
“Billy, what are you poking your brother with a fork for? I see you,
you young monkey. What do you mean?” shouted Mr. Tiddle, whose
hungry ire was beginning to master his philosophy. The last fierce
question to Billy was accompanied by a thump on the head, hard enough
to knock him stupid for life if it had happened to have struck a soft spot.
“Go into the kitchen to your sister, this very minute, sir! I'll give it you
after dinner, you wicked boy.”
The tender-hearted tailor almost immediately repented of his wrath, but
the knock on Billy's head could not be rescinded, and that young
gentleman was in the kitchen roaring bass to his sister's treble, so he did
not hear his recall to his seat at the board. There he sat sobbing, and
spitefully wishing that one of the rabbit bones which old Grubb was
vulgarly fingering would slip from his grasp and stick in his throat; while
his sister was making a variety of ugly faces and menacing gestures in
cannibal fashion to mark her contempt for the greedy man who was
eating up their nice dinner, and upsetting the peace and comfort of their
home, by making mother cross and father miserable.