"You have been quick, but it is surely wasteful to cook _two_ chops."
"You will not find them too much, I hope. I am sure you ought to eat
both."
"I do not know, but the meat is good." He fell to and ate with relish.
Katherine asked where she could find some wine for him. He again
produced his keys, selected one, and told her to open a door at the end
of the room, which she fancied led into another. It was a cupboard,
plentifully filled with bottles of various descriptions, from among
which, by her patient's direction, she selected one labelled cognac, and
gave him some in water.
Katherine sat down and watched the old man demolish both chops with
evident enjoyment. Then he paused, drank a little brandy and water, and
drew over the plate containing the butter, and smelled it very
deliberately.
"You have extravagant ways, I am afraid," he said. "This is fresh
butter."
"That piece only cost fourpence-halfpenny," she said, gravely, "and the
little you eat you had better have good."
"Fourpence-halfpenny!" he repeated, and fell into profound meditation,
from which he broke with a sudden return of anger. "What a double-dyed
villain and robber that infernal woman has been! She told me that prices
had risen to such a height that the commonest salt butter was
eighteenpence a pound, that every chop was a shilling, that--that--"
Then breaking off, with an air of the deepest pathos he exclaimed:
"Thirty shillings a week I gave her to keep the house, and she has left
the butcher unpaid for six months.
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