It was all very good and appetising; but to Annie it was pathetically old-fashioned, and helped her to realise how wholly out of the world was the life which her friends led.
“Winthrop,” said Putney, and the father and mother bowed their heads.
The boy dropped his over his folded hands, and piped up clearly: “Our Father, which art in heaven, help us to remember those who have nothing to eat. Amen!”
“That's a grace that Win got up himself,” his father explained, beginning to heap a plate with chicken and mashed potato, which he then handed to Annie, passing her the biscuit and the butter. “We think it suits the Almighty about as well as anything.”
“I suppose you know Ralph of old, Annie?” said Mrs. Putney. “The only way he keeps within bounds at all is by letting himself perfectly loose.”
Putney laughed out his acquiescence, and they began to talk together about old times. Mrs. Putney and Annie recalled the childish plays and adventures they had together, and one dreadful quarrel. Putney told of the first time he saw Annie, when his father took him one day for a call on the old judge, and how the old judge put him through his paces in American history, and would not admit the theory that the battle of Bunker's Hill could have been fought on Breed's Hill. Putney said that it was years before it occurred to him that the judge must have been joking: he had always thought he was simply ignorant.
“I used to set a good deal by the battle of Bunker's Hill,” he continued. “I thought the whole Revolution and subsequent history revolved round it, and that it gave us all liberty, equality, and fraternity at a clip. But the Lord always finds some odd jobs to look after next day, and I guess He didn't clear 'em all up at Bunker's Hill.”
Putney's irony and piety were very much of a piece apparently, and Annie was not quite sure which this conclusion was. She glanced at his wife, who seemed satisfied with it in either case. She was waiting patiently for him to wake up to the fact that he had not yet given her anything to eat; after helping Annie and the boy, he helped himself, and pending his wife's pre-occupation with the tea, he forgot her.
“Why didn't you throw something at me,” he roared, in grief and self-reproach. “There wouldn't have been a loose piece of crockery on this side of the table if I hadn't got my tea in time.”