"I'm afraid, too, that it was a failure there!"
"If so, 'twere doomed to be so. Not but what that snail might as well
have come upon anybody else's plate as hers."
"What snail?"
"Well, maister, there was a little one upon the edge of her plate when
I brought it out; and so it must have been in her few leaves of
wintergreen."
"How the deuce did a snail get there?"
"That I don't know no more than the dead; but there my gentleman was."
"But, Robert, of all places, that was where he shouldn't have been!"
"Well, 'twas his native home, come to that; and where else could we
expect him to be? I don't care who the man is, snails and caterpillars
always will lurk in close to the stump of cabbages in that tantalizing
way."
"He wasn't alive, I suppose?" said Giles, with a shudder on Grace's
account.
"Oh no. He was well boiled. I warrant him well boiled. God forbid
that a LIVE snail should be seed on any plate of victuals that's served
by Robert Creedle....But Lord, there; I don't mind 'em myself--them
small ones, for they were born on cabbage, and they've lived on
cabbage, so they must be made of cabbage. But she, the close-mouthed
little lady, she didn't say a word about it; though 'twould have made
good small conversation as to the nater of such creatures; especially
as wit ran short among us sometimes."
"Oh yes--'tis all over!" murmured Giles to himself, shaking his head
over the glooming plain of embers, and lining his forehead more than
ever. "Do you know, Robert," he said, "that she's been accustomed to
servants and everything superfine these many years? How, then, could
she stand our ways?"
"Well, all I can say is, then, that she ought to hob-and-nob elsewhere.
They shouldn't have schooled her so monstrous high, or else bachelor
men shouldn't give randys, or if they do give 'em, only to their own
race."
"Perhaps that's true," said Winterborne, rising and yawning a sigh.