“Don’t take the mayonnaise, if you don’t like it, papa; there is something else coming that will perhaps be better. Mariuccia does not at all pride herself upon her mayonnaise.”
“Mariuccia knows very little about it; she has not even the sense to know what she can do best.” He took a little more of the dish, partly out of contradiction, which was the result which Frances hoped.
“The lettuce is so crisp and young, that makes it a little better,” she said, with the air of a connoisseur.
“A little better is not the word; it is very good,” he said, fretfully; then added with a slight sigh, “Everything is better for being young.”
“Except people, I know. Why does young mean good with vegetables and everything else, and silly only when it is applied to people?--though it can’t be helped, I know.”
“That is one of your metaphysical questions,” he said, with a slight softening of his tone. “Perhaps because of human jealousy. We all like to discredit what we haven’t got, and most people you see are no longer young.”
“Oh, do you think so, papa? I think there are more young people than old people.”
“I suppose you are right, Fan; but they don’t count for so much, in the way of opinion at least. What has called forth these sage remarks?”
“Only the lettuce,” she said, with a laugh. Then, after a pause, “For instance, there were six or seven children in the party we met to-day, and only two parents.”
“There are seldom more than two parents, my dear.”
She had not looked up when she made this careless little speech, and yet there was a purpose in it, and a good deal of keen observation through her drooped eyelashes. She received his reply with a little laugh. “I did not mean that, papa; but that six or seven are a great deal more than two, which of course you will laugh at me for saying. I suppose they were all English?”
“I suppose so. The father--if he was the father--certainly was English.”
“He knew me, which is a different thing.”
Then there was a little pause. The conversation between the father and daughter was apt to run in broken periods. He very seldom originated anything. When she found a subject upon which she could interest him, he would reply, to a certain limit, and then the talk would drop. He was himself a very silent man, requiring no outlet of conversation; and when he refused to be interested, it was a task too hard for Frances to lead him into speech. She on her side was full of a thousand unsatisfied curiosities, which for the most part were buried in her own bosom. In the meantime Domenico made the circle of the table with the new dish, and his step and a question or two from his master were all the remarks that accompanied the meal. Mr Waring was something of a _gourmet_, but at the same time he was very temperate--a conjunction which is favourable to fine eating. His table was delicately furnished with dishes almost infinitesimal in quantity, but superlative in quality; and he ate his dainty light repast with gravity and slowly, as a man performs what he feels to be one of the most important functions of his life.