Without ceremony he raised to his lips a spoonful of the soup and tasted
it with a wry face.

"Do you often have this soup on the table?" he asked abruptly.

"We always have it once a day, and sometimes twice," returned Mrs.
Mudge.

"And you call the boy dainty because he don't relish such stuff as
this?" said the doctor, with an indignation he did not attempt to
conceal. "Why, I wouldn't be hired to take the contents of that bowl. It
is as bad as any of my own medicines, and that's saying a good deal.
How much nourishment do you suppose such a mixture would afford? And yet
with little else to sustain him you have worked this boy like a beast of
burden,--worse even, for they at least have abundance of GOOD food."

Mr. and Mrs. Mudge both winced under this plain speaking, but they did
not dare to give expression to their anger, for they knew well that Dr.
Townsend was an influential man in town, and, by representing the affair
in the proper quarter, might render their hold upon their present post
a very precarious one. Mr. Mudge therefore contented himself with
muttering that he guessed he worked as hard as anybody, and he didn't
complain of his fare.

"May I ask you, Mr. Mudge," said the doctor, fixing his penetrating eye
full upon him, "whether you confine yourself to the food upon which you
have kept this boy?"

"Well," said Mr. Mudge, in some confusion, moving uneasily in his
seat, "I can't say but now and then I eat something a little different."