“What’s the good,” said Veronica—not without reason. “You’ll tell them when I’ve gone to bed, and can’t put in a word for myself. Everything is always my fault. I wish sometimes that I was dead.”
“That I were dead,” I corrected her. “The verb ‘to wish,’ implying uncertainty, should always be followed by the conditional mood.”
“You ought,” said Robina, “to be thankful to Providence that you’re not dead.”
“People are sorry when you’re dead,” said Veronica.
“I suppose there’s some bread-and-cheese in the house,” suggested Dick.
“The baker, for some reason or another, has not called this morning,” Robina answered sweetly. “Neither unfortunately has the grocer. Everything there is to eat in the house you see upon the table.”
“Accidents will happen,” I said. “The philosopher—as our friend St. Leonard would tell us—only smiles.”
“I could smile,” said Dick, “if it were his lunch.”
“Cultivate,” I said, “a sense of humour. From a humorous point of view this lunch is rather good.”
“Did you have anything to eat at the St. Leonards’?” he asked.
“Just a glass or so of beer and a sandwich or two,” I admitted. “They brought it out to us while we were talking in the yard. To tell the truth, I was feeling rather peckish.”
Dick made no answer, but continued to chew bacon-rind. Nothing I could say seemed to cheer him. I thought I would try religion.
“A dinner of herbs—the sentiment applies equally to lunch—and contentment therewith is better,” I said, “than a stalled ox.”
“Don’t talk about oxen,” he interrupted fretfully. “I feel I could just eat one—a plump one.”
There is a man I know. I confess he irritates me. His argument is that you should always rise from a meal feeling hungry. As I once explained to him, you cannot rise from a meal feeling hungry without sitting down to a meal feeling hungry; which means, of course, that you are always hungry. He agreed with me. He said that was the idea—always ready.
“Most people,” he said, “rise from a meal feeling no more interest in their food. That was a mental attitude injurious to digestion. Keep it always interested; that was the proper way to treat it.”
“Of course,” he answered; “I’m talking about it.”
“Now I myself;” he explained—“I rise from breakfast feeling eager for my lunch. I get up from my lunch looking forward to my dinner. I go to bed just ready for my breakfast.”