t under some stockings.

Immediately afterwards it was dinner-time. At all meals the rule was
that there must be no talking, but at dinner the law was so strict that
even to ask for anything, as a piece of bread, or to say so much as
"Give me the salt, please," was a deadly sin. There must be absolute
silence while the master ate. The least infringement was visited with a
severe glance from his keen and brilliant blue eyes--there are no eyes
so stern as blue eyes when angry--or else he uttered a deep sigh like a
grunt, and sat rigidly upright for a moment. For he usually stooped,
and to sit upright showed annoyance. No laws of the Medes and Persians
were ever obeyed as was this law of silence in that house.

Anything that disturbed the absolute calm of the dinner hour was worse
than sacrilege; anything that threatened to disturb it was watched
intently by that repressive eye. No one must come in or go out of the
room; if anyone knocked at the door (there are no bells in old country
houses) there was a frown immediately, it necessitated someone answering
it, and then Mrs. Iden or Amaryllis had to leave the table, to go out
and open and shut the sitting-room door as they went, and again as they
returned. Amaryllis dreaded a knock at the door, it was so awful to have
to stir once they had sat down to dinner, and the servant was certain
not to know what reply to give. Sometimes it happened--and this was very
terrible--that the master himself had to go, some one wanted him about
some hay or a horse and cart, and no one could tell what to do but the
master. A dinner broken up in this way was a very serious matter indeed.

That day they had a leg of mutton--a special occasion--a joint to be
looked on reverently. Mr. Iden had walked into the town to choose it
himself some days previously, and brought it home on foot in a flag
basket. The butcher would have sent it, and if not, there were men on
the farm who could have fetched it, but it was much too important to be
left to a second person. No one could do it right but Mr. Iden himself.
There was a good deal of reason in this personal care of the meat, for
it is a certain fact that unless you do look after such things yourself,
and that persistently, too, you never get it first-rate. For this cause
people in grand villas scarcely ever have anything worth eating on their
tables. Their household expenses reach thousands yearly, and yet they
rarely have anything eatable, and their