The thoughts, too, that run
around the ring of familiar guests have a piquancy and mirthfulness,
and oftentimes a vivid truth, which more rarely find their way into
the elaborate intercourse of dinner. Hepzibah's small and ancient
table, supported on its slender and graceful legs, and covered with
a cloth of the richest damask, looked worthy to be the scene and
centre of one of the cheerfullest of parties. The vapor of the broiled
fish arose like incense from the shrine of a barbarian idol, while
the fragrance of the Mocha might have gratified the nostrils of a
tutelary Lar, or whatever power has scope over a modern breakfast-table.
Phoebe's Indian cakes were the sweetest offering of all,--in their
hue befitting the rustic altars of the innocent and golden age,--or,
so brightly yellow were they, resembling some of the bread which was
changed to glistening gold when Midas tried to eat it. The butter
must not be forgotten,--butter which Phoebe herself had churned,
in her own rural home, and brought it to her cousin as a propitiatory
gift,--smelling of clover-blossoms, and diffusing the charm of
pastoral scenery through the dark-panelled parlor. All this, with
the quaint gorgeousness of the old china cups and saucers, and the
crested spoons, and a silver cream-jug (Hepzibah's only other article
of plate, and shaped like the rudest porringer), set out a board at
which the stateliest of old Colonel Pyncheon's guests need not have
scorned to take his place.
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