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'Ah, said Martha, 'she's always calling me a shame to be heard. But I've quite forgiven her; and to-morrow I'll let her see I can make pikelets as well as her mother; and we'll have out the three china cups; only grandfather and little Nan must have common ones. I thought I'd better tell thee; and then thee'lt make haste home from church in the afternoon.
'Thee come to me, Bess, and I'll teach thee the hymns, and the singing, and how to make pikelets, and keep the house clean on a week-day. I'm going to love my enemies, and do good to them that hate me; so don't thee be shy-like. We'll be friends like Stephen and Tim; and weren't they enemies afore Stephen learned to read?
There were the three middle-aged maiden ladies in the long house on the west side of whom all he knew was that they ate far too many pikelets and griddle cakes for tea. There were the two old ladies in the white house next door who were always worrying him to sound their chests, one for her lungs and the other for her arteries. In spite of lungs and arteries they were very gay old ladies.
Thus, when it was announced that father had been called out unexpectedly, leaving an order that they were not to wait for him, she said gaily that they had better be obedient and begin, though it would have been more agreeable to wait for father. And she said how beautiful the tea was, and how beautiful the toast, and how beautiful the strawberry-jam, and how beautiful the pikelets.
He pushed the gate open; the hinges screamed, and a young woman came to the door of the cottage. As they went towards her through hives and wallflowers, "How the bees do bumble!" said Amaryllis. "Pot o' fresh tea, miss," said Bunce to the round-faced, soft-eyed girl at the door. "And pikelets and parkin an' anything you've got to hand. We've nobbut ten minutes now forth to eat an' drink."
She was not at all satisfied in her own mind that she was doing right; but Bess had met her at a neighbour's house, where she was boasting of her skill in making pikelets, and she had been drawn out by her sneers and mocking to give her a kind of challenge to come and taste them.
Martha, in her clean print dress, and white handkerchief pinned round her throat, was a pleasant contrast to the tawdry girl, who looked wildly at Stephen as he entered, as if she scarcely knew what to do. 'Good evening, Bess, he said, as pleasantly as he could. 'Martha told me thee was coming to eat some pikelets with her, so I asked Tim to come too; and after tea we'll have some rare singing.
He was scarcely sure. And if she had endured instead of accepting the kiss, was her mood to be attributed to his lateness for tea, or to the fact that she was aware of the episode of the geese? He could not divine. 'Pikelets! Good! he exclaimed, taking the cover off the dish. This strong, successful, and dominant man adored his wife, and went in fear of her.
As soon as Tim arrived, she was very busy beating up the batter for the pikelets, and then baking them over the fire; and very soon the little party were sitting down to their feast Bess declaring politely, between each piece pressed upon her by Martha, that she had never tasted such pikelets, never!
The wedding breakfast consisted of part of a leg of mutton that Jane Sarah had told the Bratts they might have, pikelets purchased from a street hawker, coffee, scrambled eggs, biscuits, butter, burgundy out of the cellar, potatoes out of the cellar, cheese, sardines, and a custard that Alice made with custard-powder.
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