Mr. and Mrs. Philip Thorne sat at their breakfast-table sparkling with new china and silver, in a dining-room so cheery with pretty carpet, plants, singing-bird, warmth and sunshine, that the beggar-girl who peeped in at the window might well wonder "if heaven were nicer than that." The coffee-urn sent up a fragrant little cloud as Mrs. Thorne turned it into delicate cups with just the right quantity of cream and sugar, so that it was just the right colour that coffee should be. The steak was tender and juicy, the baked potatoes done to a turn, and yet there was a slight cloud hanging over that table that did not come from the coffee-urn.
"Joanna does not understand making buckwheat cakes very well, I imagine," said Mr. Thorne, eyeing the doubtful looking pile she had just deposited on the table.
"Joanna did not make these, I made them with my own hands," responded Mrs. Thorne. Said hands were very white and small, but truth to tell, they were not much more skilled than were Joanna's.
"Then it must be the baking that spoils them," Mr. Thorne said.
"Why, Philip, how do you know that they are spoiled? I'm sure they look all right," said his wife.
"That is just where you and I do not agree, my dear. They are white-looking, they ought to be a rich brown."
"Whoever heard of brown buckwheat cakes; they are always very light coloured."
"I beg your pardon, but they are not, as far as my observation goes," said her husband; "then these are thick, they ought to be thin and delicate-looking."
"You are thinking of something else, Philip," said Mrs. Thorne, patronisingly. "Buckwheat cakes never look differently from these; I have noticed them at a great many places."
"You never ate them at my mother's or you could not say so, my dear."
Mrs. Thorne stirred her coffee vigorously. Was Philip going to turn out to be one of those detestable men who always go about telling how "their mother" used to do; "my mother," as if there was no other mother in the world that amounted to anything.
"I always have noticed," she said, "that a person imagines, after being from home a few years that there is nothing quite so good as he used to get at home; even the very same things never tasted quite as they used to. The reason is plain: taste changes as one grows older."