“We han’t got no such ’poons to home, have we, pa?” interrogated the youngster.
“Ah, James!” interrupted Mrs. Skates, who had had more than she could do thus far to keep her borrowed finery out of the hands and mouth of the astonished baby, “Ah, James; what did I tell you?”
“You said you should trounce me if I wasn’t still,” confessed the child, rapping his head with the fork, and making it do the service of a comb in frizzling up his nicely-smoothed hair. But the memory of the threat silenced him for a few minutes, while a fiery-red blush of three-fold mortification, suffused the before glowing cheeks of his exasperated mamma—mortification that her son had exposed his ignorance of the purposes for which silver forks are used—that he should disclose so publicly, and without remorse, the unfortunate and disgraceful fact that he was a stranger to such luxuries at home, and lastly, that he should be so explicit in his delineation of her peculiar mode of family discipline!
But Mrs. Skates’s cheeks tingled worse and worse, and her forehead burned hotter and hotter, when she heard her unsophisticated spouse remark to a waiter who handed him a well-filled plate,
“Thank’ee, thank’ee, sir, but you’ve loaded most too heavy of that; I can’t eat all this and taste of all them other sorts, too. I see you’ve got lots back there yet!” Mrs. Skates set her satin slipper hard down on Mr. Skates’s boot, under the table, telegraphing that he was guilty of something, he hardly knew what; but it made him silent, and left her to blush and flutter at the impertinent smile she saw running from lip to lip on the other side of the table,—a cruel but very common way of exposing the real vulgarity and grossness of mind which would pass itself for high breeding, and a contempt for what, by a kind of false comparison, appears unrefined or uncultivated in the manners of others.
Little James by this time had recovered from the shock he had experienced from the recollection of what was in store for him, if he “wasn’t still,” and he found his curiosity was by no means satisfied concerning the new things that were about him. He pro-
